Exploring the Cosmic Neighborhood - Trail Guide
Introduction
David M. Kary - Santa Barbara Museum of Natural
History
David M. Kary
Born: Dec 9,1964, New Westminster, BC, Canada
B.Sc. Astronomy and Geophysics, UBC 1987
Senior thesis on observing orbital motion of the Galilean Moons of Jupiter
Ph.D. Astrophysics, State U. of New York at Stony Brook, NY 1993
Doctoral thesis on the origin of planetary rotation and studies of planet
formation in the presence of gas drag.
Post-Doctoral Researcher, U.California at Santa Barbara 1993-1996
Research on comet motions and the impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
with Jupiter
Director of Astronomy, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, 1996-present
New planetarium shows written and produced:
Serpents of the Summer Sky
Jupiter, the Mammoth Planet
The New Worlds: Planets Around Other Stars
The Crab Nebula: Death of a Star
Hale-Bopp: A Comet for the 90s.
Summary of Mars Talk:
Humans have been fascinated for as long as we've watched the skies. But
after the invention of the telescope, planets became places,
and people began to speculate on the possibility of life on other worlds,
especially Mars. In the second half of the 19th century, this speculation
seemed confirmed when astronomers began to report seeing
straight-line features that many thought were canals.
The most prominent supported of this idea was Percival Lowell,
whose books and lectures promoted the picture of Mars as a dying world
peopled by a highly advanced civilization. Even though the scientific
community soon came to seriously doubt there were any canals on Mars,
Lowell's view became the popular picture of Mars for over half a century.
It wasn't until the 1960s and 70s when spacecraft visited Mars and
showed that it really does seem to be a dead world that the popular picture
of Mars started to change.
And yet, the same spacecraft that failed to find any signs of
current life on Mars, also found that Mars may have had life billions of
years ago. There were signs that running water once existed on Mars,
indicating that Mars was once warmer, wetter, and had more atmosphere.
Over three billion years ago, when life was already starting on the Earth,
Mars may have been a lot more like the Earth than it is now. This started
the speculation that fossilized bacterial life may be found in some of
these Martian riverbeds. Then, last summer, scientists studying a
meteorite known to have come from Mars announced that they had found
chemical fossils in the meteorite. There is a tremendous amount of
controversy surrounding these fossils, and they may well turn out to be
caused by other non-living processes. However, the discovery has
renewed the interest in life on Mars, and in the spacecraft presently on
their way to Mars.
Recommended
Links:
The Nine Planets Home Page (The place to start learning about
the solar system)
Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Meteorite Page
JPL Mars Pathfinder Page
Lunar and Planetary Science Conference Abstracts on Mars Meteorites:
Percival Lowell's Book about Mars
Reading:
-The Red Planet's Colorful Past by William Sheehan. Astronomy Magazine,
March 1997. Page 44
-Messengers from Mars by Mark Robinson and Meenakshi Wadwa.
Astronomy Magazine, August 1995. Page 44
-Was There Life on Mars? by Robert Naeye. Astronomy Magazine, November 1996. Page 46
Planets and Perception by William Sheehan, University of Arizona Press, 1988.
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