News and Events

For much of its existence, Earth has been inhabited. But if researchers remotely analyzed the atmosphere of that young Earth, they might have missed the evidence for life....In a 2017 paper led by Chris Reinhard at Georgia Tech, the Alternative Earths team flagged the danger of false negatives in the hunt for habitable planets. The presence of both methane and oxygen in an atmosphere has been viewed as a gold standard in the search for distant life. These two gases should not coexist in appreciable amounts, as they react rapidly with each other, but living organisms can constantly replenish them in the atmosphere, allowing this disequilibrium to persist.

While it’s largely business as usual in Cobb’s cities following Tuesday’s municipal elections, Smyrna’s government faces significant change....It would also mean newcomer Lewis Wheaton, a 42-year-old Georgia Tech professor who won 57% of the preliminary vote in the Ward 7 race, would be the only person of color on the council.

At Georgia Tech, members and trainees of the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection discuss the identification of pathogen essential genes during coinfections, and how coral management can improve coral defenses against pathogens. Guests were Marvin Whiteley, Gina Lewin, Deanna Beatty, Mark Hay, and Frank Stewart.