Solar Terrestrial Sciences

The prize that failed forward: How a 100,000-franc quest for aliens funded a century of astronomy

Asmae Ourkiya December 17, 2025

Photo by Leo Visions. Source: Unsplash

Today, 17 December, marks 125 years since the formal announcement of one of the most eccentric, ambitious, and ultimately consequential prizes in the history of science: the Prix Pierre Guzman. Announced by the French Académie des Sciences in December 1900, the award promised 100,000 francs, which is the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars today, to the first person who could successful ...[Read More]

Chasing solar storms and coffee breaks

Jakub Stepanovic May 20, 2024

Erika Palmerio cherishes opportunities to interact with the EGU community.

Erika Palmerio, a leading early career scientist working on conditions in space driven by solar activity, shares her journey of networking and inspiration.

The best Christmas gift you could ask for: how a rare solar event created a once-in-a-lifetime Martian experiment

Hazel Gibson December 20, 2023

An artist's concept of the MAVEN craft orbiting Mars (Credit: NASA/GSFC).

One of the realities of studying the Earth, planetary or space sciences is that we are attempting to observe an experiment that has been in progress for billions of years, with variables that are most often far outside of our control. Many researchers try to understand these systems by recreating aspects of it, either in analogue experiments or by using simulations, where the variables can be adju ...[Read More]

GeoTalk: Meet Liliana Macotela, researcher of radio waves at the Earth-Space boundary & Solar-Terrestrial ECS Representative!

Simon Clark October 20, 2023

Liliana Macotela Cruz

Hi Liliana. Welcome to GeoTalk! Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Hi, I was born in the highlands in Peru. This gave me the advantage of living more in contact with nature. Since I remember, I was fascinated about the shape of the clouds, the sounds of the wind in the mountains or trees, the sounds of the rain and what they do to our surrounding; the lightning flashes and t ...[Read More]