Intense drive, creativity and a commitment to doing what’s right: Those are a few characteristics two Penn State professors use to describe Mark Pagani, a Penn State geosciences alumnus who died on Nov. 18 after multiple years of battling with an aggressive type of lymphoma.

 Imagine the scientific potential that could be unlocked if researchers with novel ideas could be matched with laboratories with cutting-edge technology. A new program promises to do that for the field of rock deformation research. In fact, such collaborations are already under way.

 UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Dramatic climate cycles on early Mars, triggered by buildup of greenhouse gases, may be the key to understanding how liquid water left its mark on the planet's surface, according to a team of planetary scientists.

Scientists have long debated how deep canyons and extensive valley networks — like the kinds carved by running water over millions of years on Earth — could form on Mars some 3.8 billion years ago, a time many believe the planet was frozen.

As her plane landed in Germany, Heather Jones felt a wave of anticipation. For the next three weeks, Jones, a doctoral student in geosciences at Penn State, would be lending her scientific expertise in micropaleontology to assist the first-ever research team to collect samples from the Chicxulub impact crater. The crater is the remains of the cataclysmic event — an asteroid 6 miles wide crashing into Earth — widely believed to have led to the extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/treasures-earth-power.html