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Project Investigators: Margaret Tolbert, Owen Toon
Other Project Members
Helen DeWitt (Doctoral Student)Melissa Trainer (Research Staff)Richard Urata (Doctoral Student)Kaj Williams (Doctoral Student)Raina Gough (Doctoral Student)Adrienne Dove (Doctoral Student)Eric Wolf (Doctoral Student)Summary
Our goals are to understand the origin of life on early Earth by using Titan and Mars as analogs, and to provide clues to the environments on Mars where life might be hidden.
Astrobiology Roadmap Objectives:
- Objective 1.1: Models of formation and evolution of habitable planets
- Objective 2.1: Mars exploration
- Objective 2.2: Outer Solar System exploration
- Objective 3.1: Sources of prebiotic materials and catalysts
- Objective 4.1: Earth's early biosphere
Project Progress
Mission Involvement
CassiniWe have made use of Cassini data to better determine the properties of Titan aerosolsCross-Team Collaborations
We interact extensively with Alex Pavlov-U. Arizona, Chris Mckay and Jan Heldmann-Ames, and Jim Kasting-Penn State. We have co-authored papers with Alex, Chris and Jen. We are co-developing models with Alex, Chris and Jim. Alex, chris and Jim have made suggestions for lab measurements.
Publications
Curtis, D., Hatch, C., Hasenkopf, C.A., Toon, O.B., Tolbert, M.A., McKay, C.P. & Khare, B.N. (2008). Laboratory studies of methane and ethane adsorption and nucleation onto organic particles:Application to Titan’s clouds. Icarus, 195(2):792-801.
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- A Novel Route to New, Simpler, Self-aminoacylating Ribozymes
- Bally project
- Biological potential of Mars
- Carbon Flow Between Organisms in Complex Communities
- DDF: Geomicrobiology of a Unique Ice-Sulfur Spring Ecosystem in the High Arctic
- FU ORIONIS ERUPTIONS
- Functional Genomics of Thioredoxins in Halobacterium sp. NRC-1
- Identifying microbial life at crustal rock-water interfaces
- Microbial diversity of a hypersaline microbial mat
- Origin of multicellularity and complex land-based ecosystem
- Philosophical Problems in Astrobiology; issues on the origin of life,
- Planet Formation and Dynamical Modeling
- Star and Planet Formation
- Sulfur biogeochemistry of the Early Earth
- Understanding the Microbial Ecology of Geologically-based Chemolithoautotrophic Communities