Simon Stähler awarded the 2023 AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize
ETH Zurich Earthquake scientist, Simon St?hler and colleagues were presented with the 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Newcomb Cleveland Prize for their paper on "Seismic Detection of the Martian Core" published in the prestigious journal, Science.
A Seismology and Geodynamics lecturer at ETH Zurich, Simon St?hler’s work is literally out of this world! Using state-of-the-art seismometers, he has studied Earthquake tremors everywhere - from the ocean floor to the world’s bridges. In 2019, however, St?hler joined the Marsquake Service - a team that monitored the daily seismic activity transmitted from Mars.
Clues to Mars’ Geological History
As part of a collaboration of international researchers, St?hler examined daily transmissions from the Mars InSight Mission’s seismometer, SEIS - short for “Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure.” Arguably the most sensitive seismometer ever developed, SEIS is able to tune in to tremors smaller than a hydrogen atom revealing clues to the geological history and interior structure of the red planet. From reflections of seismic waves from the core-mantle boundary of Mars, the team was able to determine that Mars has a large core. A large core implies a mantle that is mineralogically similar to Earth’s upper mantle and transition zone. However, Mars differs from Earth in terms of its core. The Martian core is much less dense implying a number of light elements such as oxygen and sulfur dissolved in the iron-nickel core. This observation is hard to reconcile with classic formation models of the planet.
AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize
Every year hundreds of ground-breaking research papers are published in the journal, Science, but only one is selected for the prestigious AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize, the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s oldest award. The prize-winning paper is chosen based on the quality of the scholarship, innovation, presentation, likelihood of influencing the field, and wider interdisciplinary significance.
On 2 March 2023, the board of directors for the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington DC awarded Simon St?hler and co-authors the 2023 AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for their paper on “Seismic detection of the Martian core” published in the journal, Science in July 2021. Supported by The Fodor Family Trust, St?hler received a prize award of USD 25,000.
The researchers decided to donate proceeds of the cash prize to the disaster fund of Medécins sans frontiers in light of the recent, devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.
Further information
St?hler S et al.: Seismic detection of the Martian core. Science, 373, (6553) p. 443-448. external pagedoi:10.1126/science.abi7730
InSight mission
InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) is an unmanned external pageNASA external pageMars mission. In November 2018, the stationary external pagelander, which is equipped with a external pageseismometer and a external pageheat probe, safely landed on the Martian surface. The geophysical instruments on the red planet permit exploration of its interior. A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'?tudes Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (external pageSEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (USA).