Two of three payloads being prepared to investigate three types of aurora sit inside the payload assembly area at Poker Flat Research Range on Friday, Jan. 10, 2025. Photo by Bryan Whitten

Three rockets will ignite Poker Flat’s 2025 launch season

January 16, 2025
Three NASA sounding rockets are set to launch from Poker Flat Research Range as early as Tuesday to learn more about three types of aurora —...
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Unraveling the aurora's birth

December 20, 2024
More than a week of waiting for the right conditions in a short nightly launch window had come to this: a few remaining minutes on the final...
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New research shows that three sites spread along an approximately 620-mile portion of today’s Denali Fault in Alaska were once a smaller united geologic feature indicative of the final joining of two land masses. That feature was then torn apart by millions of years of tectonic activity.
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Big stretch on the Denali Fault

December 19, 2024
New research shows that three sites spread along an approximately 620-mile portion of today’s Denali Fault in Alaska were once a smaller united...
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The northern lights adorn the sky over the UAF Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station early Sunday morning, April 21, 2024. UAF photo by Eric Engman

First results from 2021 rocket launch shed light on aurora’s birth

December 19, 2024
Newly published results from a 2021 experiment led by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist have begun to reveal the particle-level...
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Associate professor Sean Regan holds a copy of the December edition of Geology, which features his latest research in its cover photo. Photo by Bryan Whitten

Denali Fault tore apart ancient joining of two landmasses

December 19, 2024
New research shows that three sites spread along an approximately 620-mile portion of today’s Denali Fault were once a smaller united geologic...
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Setting up the UAF Research booth. Photo by Rod Boyce

What a week in D.C. for AGU24

December 18, 2024
Nearly 90 University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute researchers — faculty, students and staff — made just over 100 oral and poster...
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The ionosphere and aurora wrap around Earth, as seen from the International Space Station. Photo courtesy of NASA

NASA-funded project looks for answers about aurora’s energy

December 3, 2024
Most electrons that create the aurora have a moderate amount of energy, but scientists want to know more about how electrons on either side on...
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A photograph made during fieldwork along the Yukon River in central Alaska in 2023 shows the four-toed track. Photo courtesy of Anthony Fiorillo

Fossil tracks push range of large bird northward

November 4, 2024
Scientists from Fairbanks, New Mexico and Japan have discovered the first reported fossilized tracks of a large four-toed bird that inhabited...
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Research assistant professor Florian Hofmann of the UAF Geophysical Institute’s Geochronology Lab works on the lab’s argon mass spectrometer. Photo by JR Ancheta

UAF aims to make Alaska a critical minerals hub

November 1, 2024
The University of Alaska Fairbanks has a new research unit that aims to make Alaska a global leader in research and development of critical...
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About

Since it was established by an Act of Congress in 1946, scientists at the Geophysical Institute have studied geophysical processes from the center of the Earth to the surface of the sun and beyond, turning data and observations into information useful for state, Arctic and national priorities.

Contact info

The GI is located on the West Ridge of the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus.

2156 Koyukuk Drive
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks, AK 99775

We acknowledge the Alaska Native nations upon whose ancestral lands our campuses reside. In Fairbanks, our Troth Yeddha' Campus is located on the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River.

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