Geoff Brumfiel
Geoff Brumfiel works as a senior editor and correspondent on NPR's science desk. His editing duties include science and space, while his reporting focuses on the intersection of science and national security.
From April of 2016 to September of 2018, Brumfiel served as an editor overseeing basic research and climate science. Prior to that, he worked for three years as a reporter covering physics and space for the network. Brumfiel has carried his microphone into ghost villages created by the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. He's tracked the journey of highly enriched uranium as it was shipped out of Poland. For a story on how animals drink, he crouched for over an hour and tried to convince his neighbor's cat to lap a bowl of milk.
Before NPR, Brumfiel was based in London as a senior reporter for Nature Magazine from 2007-2013. There, he covered energy, space, climate, and the physical sciences. From 2002 – 2007, Brumfiel was Nature Magazine's Washington Correspondent.
Brumfiel is the 2013 winner ofthe Association of British Science Writers award for news reporting on the Fukushima nuclear accident.
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Nuclear power is potentially dangerous. So is sending humans to Mars. But some researchers think a nuclear-powered rocket might be the best way to travel to the red planet.
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A new global treaty banning nuclear weapons will go into force on Friday. More than 80 countries have signed on to it — but none of them are countries that have nuclear weapons.
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This has been a tough year for pretty much everyone on Earth. But things have been going much better in space. One of the big milestone was for NASA and the commercial company SpaceX.
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A Chinese probe has blasted off from the surface of the moon, carrying the first moon rock samples collected in over 40 years.
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The killing of a top Iranian scientist last week will likely complicate efforts to restart the Iran nuclear deal. Will Iran really throw out nuclear weapons inspectors?
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Three missions from Earth are currently headed to Mars. But some scientists are saying it's time to go to Venus, despite all the challenges in heading to Earth's toxic, volcanic planetary neighbor.
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The mission will land, take a sample and return to Earth. It's the first such sample-return mission in more than 40 years, and it will tell scientists about the age of the moon and planets.
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Four astronauts are flying to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX's Dragon crew capsule. The mission is the first of what NASA hopes are many. -
NASA has announced the discovery of water in a sunlit crater on the moon. The water is likely trapped inside of little glass beads and may one day be useful for astronauts visiting the surface.
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More hospitalized patients are surviving than early in the pandemic. Improved treatments make a big difference, but so does flattening the curve to keep hospitals from overfilling, researchers say.
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The mission took place this past weekend, shrouded in secrecy, but some clues are emerging about what China sent into space, and why.
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Dr. Scott Atlas is a radiologist from Stanford with some unorthodox ideas about managing the pandemic. The White House says his thinking is just what's needed, but scientists aren't so sure.
