Read the latest news about research conducted by investigators in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. Our faculty and students are continually advancing technology, creating solutions and expanding knowledge with new and innovative research.
10/03/2023
A multi-institutional project led by a Penn State researcher is focused on developing an all-in-one semiconductor device that can both store data and perform computations.
10/02/2023
The latest episode of "Growing Impact" explores how wastewater treatment plants could use solar power to improve their environmental performance, their communities and their finances.
09/26/2023
Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid the size of San Francisco crashed into a shallow sea off the coast of modern-day Mexico and plunged the world into an extinction event that killed off as much as 75% of life, including the dinosaurs.
09/21/2023
The Earth’s crust continued a slow process of reworking for billions of years, rather than rapidly slowing its growth some 3 billion years ago, according to a Penn State-led research team.
09/19/2023
A new technique proposed by Penn State scientists may help prevent “short-circuits” that can cause geothermal power plants to halt production, potentially improving the efficiency of geothermal power, the researchers said.
09/06/2023
One of the few things scientists know for certain about glass is that its atomic structure is chaos. Neither liquid nor solid, glass is its own phase — a material somewhere between these two states of matter — that owes its existence to the way it is formed.
08/28/2023
A team of Penn State researchers has received a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to spearhead a new initiative to create novel monitoring systems for insect populations, many of which are experiencing dramatic changes across the globe due to changes in land use, pollution and climate change.
08/25/2023
When the ground rumbles in Antarctica, it may be an icequake — like an earthquake but caused by the movement of ice, not rock. A new study by Penn State researchers found that these seismic events are driven by ocean tides at a major ice stream in West Antarctica.
08/16/2023
The demand for high-performance batteries, especially for use in electric vehicles, is surging as the world shifts its energy consumption to a more electric-powered system, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and prioritizing climate remediation efforts.
08/15/2023
Americans in the northeast paid greater attention to air quality alerts this summer as wildfire smoke thickened skies with an orange-tinted haze.