Alexandra Witze

Contributing Correspondent

Alexandra Witze is a contributing correspondent based in Boulder, Colorado. Among other exotic locales, her reporting has taken her to Maya ruins in the jungles of Guatemala, among rotting corpses at the University of Tennessee's legendary "Body Farm," and to a floating sea-ice camp at the North Pole. She has a bachelor's degree in geology from MIT and a graduate certification in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among her honors are the Science-in-Society award from the National Association of Science Writers (shared with Tom Siegfried), and the American Geophysical Union's award for feature journalism. She coauthored the book Island on Fire, about the 18th-century eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki.

All Stories by Alexandra Witze

  1. Loss of eyes in the sky hurts science on the ground

    In a clean room at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California sits the next great hope of the United States’ Earth-monitoring program. About the size of a minibus, it is covered in gold foil, riddled with electrical wires, and very clean. This $1.5-billion satellite is state-of-the-art, carrying five advanced instruments to measure everything from […]

  2. Earth

    Summer Arctic melt among worst ever

    With no obvious weather pattern to explain this year’s near-record annual ice retreat, generally warming climate appears to be the culprit.

  3. Paleontology

    Acidifying oceans helped fuel mass extinction

    The great die-off 250 million years ago could trace in part to hostile water conditions, a modeling study suggests.

  4. Chemistry

    Pooping pandas may make better biofuels

    Gut microbes break down bamboo efficiently, inspiring new approaches to process raw plant materials for fuel.

  5. Space

    Flying on Sunshine

    Once futuristic visions, solar sails now take off.

  6. Anthropology

    The Iceman’s last meal: goat

    Two decades after he was discovered sticking out of an Alpine glacier, a famous 5,300-year-old mummy’s diet details and hiking habits are revealed.

  7. Science & Society

    A prescription for complexity: public health and climate change

  8. Chemistry

    Meteorites contain chemicals linked to life

    Space rocks could have delivered DNA building blocks to Earth.

  9. Humans

    Taking the measure of a hobbit

    Study of fossil skull suggests ancient creature could have been Homo sapiens.

  10. Materials Science

    Carbon flatland

    Graphene’s two dimensions offer new physics, novel electronics.

  11. Earth

    Small volcanoes add up to cooler climate

    Airborne particles sent skyward by eruptions since 2000 have counteracted the warming effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.

  12. Space

    Astronomers probe matter in early universe

    Smeared light from the dawn of time confirms ideas about a mysterious dark energy permeating the cosmos.