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Full-Text Articles in Geology
Morphological Biosignatures And The Search For Life On Mars, Sherry L. Cady, Jack D. Farmer, John P. Grotzinger, J. William Schopf, Andrew Steele
Morphological Biosignatures And The Search For Life On Mars, Sherry L. Cady, Jack D. Farmer, John P. Grotzinger, J. William Schopf, Andrew Steele
Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations
This report provides a rationale for the advances in instrumentation and understanding needed to assess claims of ancient and extraterrestrial life made on the basis of morphological biosignatures. Morphological biosignatures consist of bona fide microbial fossils as well as microbially influenced sedimentary structures. To be recognized as evidence of life, microbial fossils must contain chemical and structural attributes uniquely indicative of microbial cells or cellular or extracellular processes. When combined with various research strategies, high-resolution instruments can reveal such attributes and elucidate how morphological fossils form and become altered, thereby improving the ability to recognize them in the geological record …
The Effect Of Viscosity On Impact Cratering And Possible Application To The Icy Satellites Of Saturn And Jupiter, Jonathan H. Fink, Donald Gault, Ronald Greeley
The Effect Of Viscosity On Impact Cratering And Possible Application To The Icy Satellites Of Saturn And Jupiter, Jonathan H. Fink, Donald Gault, Ronald Greeley
Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Impact experiments in Newtonian fluids with a range of viscosities of 10-3 to 60 Pa s demonstrate that transient prater volume and shape (depth-to-diameter: ratio) depend on target viscosity as well as on gravity. Volume is reduced, and depth-to-diameter ratio is increased for cratering events in which viscosity plays a dominant role. In addition to being affected by target kinematic viscosity, viscous scaling is most strongly influenced by projectile diameter, less strongly by projectile velocity, and least strongly by gravity. In a Planetary context, viscols effects can occur for craters formed by small or slow moving impacting bodies, low …