November 08, 2010 

SETI Archive: seti.org/talks

Lakes are time capsules. On Earth, they are considered sentinels of climate change and may have played the same role on early Mars. Their basins capture the record of geological and environmental fluctuations over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. Terrestrial lakes host a diversity of habitats where life's adaptability can be pushed to the edge in often unstable environments. They preserve the evidence of ancient life as sedimentation rapidly entombs dead organisms and generates anoxic conditions favoring the formation of fossils. This makes them prime candidates for exploration. The existence of lakes on ancient Mars is now widely accepted but that was not always the case. The history of science shows that knowledge on any scientific question is shaped by the means of exploration and those means are molded by what we think the world is. Prior to Mars Global Surveyor, the relatively low resolution of orbital imagery made it difficult to confirm Martian paleolakes by direct observations, though their existence was inferred because valley networks had already been identified on Viking and Mariner 9 images. Interpretation rested on ambiguous morphological evidence at 200 m/pixel on average with only localized coverage at higher resolution. Today, high-resolution imagery, morphology, geology, and mineralogy converge to support the existence of ancient standing bodies of water on Mars. This evidence is collectively examined by 33 authors and co-authors in the first monograph on the subject entitled /Lakes on Mars/, a book to be published by Elsevier, September 3, 2010 (Nathalie A. Cabrol and Edmond A. Grin, Eds). Here, Dr. Nathalie Cabrol will discuss the evidence presented in the book, its environmental significance in terms of climate and habitability, and the questions it still raises.

1. Dale Cruikshank: Outer Solar System Ices
2. Adrian Brown: Poles of Mars
3. Bruce Damer: Simulating Life's Origin
4. Laurance Doyle: Mongolian and other Historic Solar Eclipses
5. Daniel Rasky: Augustine Commission - The Way Forward on US Manned Spaceflight
6. Sergei Dubovsky: Observing String Multiverse with Astrophysical Black Holes
7. Conny Aerts - Asteroseismology
8. Carol Stoker - Phoenix Mission and Habitability
9. ames Benford - Interstellar Beacons
10. Brad Bailey - Life in Basaltic Glass in the oceanic basins
11. Nancy McKeown: Mawrth Vallis, Mars
12. Bob Pappalardo: Europa Jupiter Orbiter
13. David Jewitt:- Solar System Primordial Ice Reservoirs
14. Harry Jones: Starship Life Support
15. Jeff Moore: Mysteries on Titan
16. Farid Salama: Interstellar Clouds
17. Mark Showalter: Marine Biodiversity
18. Jen Blank: ChemCam on Mars Science Lab Rover
19. Pete Worden, Pavel Podvig, Will Marshall: Nuclear Weapons and Space Weapons
20. Samantha Blair: Interstellar Medium Interference
21. Jon Jenkins: Kepler Worlds
22. Dan Lubin: Maunder Minimum
23. Monika Kress: Habitable Planets
24. Intersection of Physics and Biology - Jan Liphardt
25. Mark Marley: Atmospheres of Brown Dwarfs and Exoplanets
26. Sarah Church: Polarized Cosmic Microwave Background
27. Peter Jenniskens: Hayabusa Reentry
28. Don Lowe: Late Heavy Bombardment
29. Mark Krumholz: Star Formation Rate
30. Heather Knutson: Exoplanet Atmospheres
31. David Des Marais: Exploring Mars for Habitable Environments
32. Ralph Lorenz: Titan Unveiled
33. REU Students Review 2010
34. Nick Kanas: Psychology of Spaceflight
35. Rus Belikov: Beyond Kepler - Imaging Exo-Earths
36. Bill Colson: Free Electron Laser Communications
37. David Korsmeyer: NASA Future Human Missions
38. Pascal Lee: Haughton-Mars Project
39. Chris McKay: Titan - Past, Present, Future
40. Nathalie Cabrol: Lakes on Mars
41. Margarita Marinova: Martian Dichotomy
42. Ellen Howell: Radar videos of asteroids

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