Granular materials are ubiquitous in nature and, after water, are the second most manipulated materials on earth. Deceivingly simple at the grain scale, these materials are composed of individual partiles that collectively display complex behavior controlling the onset of macroscopic phenomena, such as earthquakes, landslides and planetary morphology. This lecture will present new methods to characterize and model granular materials for terrestrial and extraterrestrial applications.

We have embarked on a journey at the frontier of high energies with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Using the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and the LHC, two of the most complex instruments ever devised, and new methods developed at Caltech, we are homing in on the Higgs particles thought to be responsible for mass in the universe; searching for supersymmetry, which brings together particle physics and spacetime; and searching for evidence of extra dimensions of space and other exotic new particles.

The San Andreas and similar faults separate two tectonic plates slowly moving in opposite directions. The faults can remain locked for many years, then catch up in sudden dramatic rupture events perceived as earthquakes. These occasional fast motions co-exist with much slower fault slips. This talk will describe how laboratory-derived friction laws and sophisticated numerical models can reproduce, in remarkable detail, all stages of past fault behavior - locked, slowly moving and earthquake-producing - bringing us closer to understanding earthquake physics.

The Mars Science Laboratory Mission was designed to explore the habitability of Mars. This includes both modern environments, as well as ancient environments represented by the Gale crater landing site. The Curiosity rover has a designed lifetime of approximately two Earth years and drive capability of at least 20 km. Gale Crater's regional context and strong evidence for a progression through multiple potentially habitable environments, represented by a stratigraphic record of extraordinary extent, insure preservation of a rich record of the environmental history of early Mars.