Instructions:

• You may work on this assignment with others in class in groups of up to 4 people.

• You may use the classroom discussion board (feedback link on the homepage) to discuss this assignment.

• Turn your assignment in via email to the graders:
  Ted Martin (tmartin1@darkwing.uoregon.edu)

  Theresa Kelly (tkelly@darkwing.uoregon.edu)

  Provide some information in response to the following questions. This is best done by using an Internet search engine and typing in a key word or phrase related to the question.

  You may continue to work with others if you want to do this assignment jointly.

  Note the last question will require you to run a JAVA applet in your browser and to work with data.

  1. What is the current media frenzy about "Life on Mars" all about? How credible is the scientific evidence on which these new claims are being based?

  2. While it is clear that an asteroid impact occurred 65 million years ago, it is less clear that the impact was the primary cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs. See what other credible theories you can find about the actual physical extinction mechanisms that wiped out dinosaurs as well as most plankton 65 million years ago.

  3. Recently the entire biological community was shaken by a discovery called the "African Eve". What is this discovery and what does it suggest about the origin of Humans?

  4. What are tube worm colonies? Where are they located and what is their significance to the formation of life?

  5. Galaxies frequently run into each other and have a tidal interaction. You will use a computational engine to model two interacting galaxies to see if you can reproduce the observed morphology of two real systems.

     This applet is doing calculations in your browser concerning the gravitational interaction between galaxies. You can twiddle the dials with left or right mouse button to change orientations. You can change mass ratios and distances of closest approach (peri parameter). You can choose to have a big dark matter halo around the galaxies or not (that's the Big Halo box).

     Your mission is to see if you can produce a simulation that looks like the real system below which is loaded as a background image in the engine. When the colored dots more or less overlap with the image, you can consider that a reasonably good model.

     Record the parameters of that simulation and the time (in millions of years, its printed at the top of the applet) when the simulation sort of looks like the real system.

     There are two systems to model: (note: to get the simulation to fire up the first time hit start,stop,reset, start. Just hitting start may not work).

     System Number 1

     System Number 2