Geology

High prices at the pump this summer have Utahns thinking more about gasoline than they might otherwise like. But for a group of Brigham Young University geology students, the chance to ponder the particulars of petroleum was one they couldn’t pass up.

While the North Pole may be the center of action each Christmas, one Brigham Young University student is spending the holidays near the South Pole, as far away from Santa as he could possibly be. John Chaston, a senior from Somersworth, N.H., majoring in microbiology, left December 18 for an Antarctic research station and is spending the holidays as part of a team studying the unique environment and gathering ecological data.

A Brigham Young University professor has been tapped to join a project the National Science Foundation likens to the missions that placed a man on the moon and that deciphered the human genome.

Thrusting the iron claws of their hammers into a river of red-hot lava, Brigham Young University students pull back ropy samples of molten rock that stretch through the air like soft taffy.