Titan, it turns out, may be a very stormy place. In 2001, a group of astronomers led by Henry Roe, now a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology, discovered methane clouds near the south pole of Saturn's largest moon, resolving a debate about whether such clouds exist amid the haze of its atmosphere.

Thanks to a $13,254,000 grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Caltech has established the Tectonic Observatory, under the direction of Avouac, with the ultimate goal, he says, of "providing a new view of how and why the earth's crust is deforming over timescales ranging from a few tens of seconds, the typical duration of an earthquake, to several tens of million of years."

The National Science Foundation has awarded $6.75 million to the California Institute of Technology to house the central activities of a major new community-based, software engineering effort to revolutionize scientific computing in geophysics. The NSF initiative, which will involve at least 24 other American universities and research institutions and four foreign affiliates, is intended to allow scientists studying such fields as seismology, plate tectonics, volcanism, and geomagnetism to take full advantage of recent advances and extraordinary opportunities available in scientific computation.

PASADENA, Calif. — Probably the only experience the nonscientist has had with the so-called noble gases is the helium found in balloons. But Ken Farley, a geochemist at the California Institute of Technology, has roamed the earth looking for trace amounts of these gases--argon, helium, krypton, neon, xenon, and sometimes radon--that provide clues to the evolution of the earth's interior and atmosphere.

Geobiologists are announcing today their first major success in using a novel method of "growing" bacteria-infested rocks in order to study early life forms. The research could be a significant tool for use in better understanding the history of life on Earth, and perhaps could also be useful in astrobiology.

PASADENA, Calif. — Hiroo Kanamori was caught by surprise on learning he had been awarded the prestigious Japan Academy Prize in June. Established as the Tokyo Academy in 1879, the Japan Academy presents the award for excellence in academic theses, books, and scientific achievement.

A common-sense notion among many Californians is that frequent small earthquakes allow a fault to slowly relieve accumulating strain, thereby making large earthquakes less likely. New research suggests that this is not the case for a long stretch of the San Andreas fault in Southern California.

Robert Phillip Sharp, a leading authority on the surfaces of Earth and Mars and longtime head of the geological sciences division at the California Institute of Technology, died May 25 at his home in Santa Barbara. He was 92.

Three members of the faculty at the California Institute of Technology have been named among the most recent winners of the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The honor was announced today by the White House.