Opening a New Chapter in the Martian Chronicles

California Institute of Technology Volume 2., No.• ~emlMr1"2 B•• ed on d.t. from the 1975 Viking ml ••lon , the Explore". Guide to MoIr • .... pon Arden Albee'. w a ll will be In for . ome updating once Ma ,. Ob.erve r be g in. It ••urv e v of the planet late ne xt vear. Albee ke ep. a replica of the .pacecraft In Caltech'. Office of Graduate Studle., w" .. e In addition to hi. role a. Ob.e rver project .clentl.t, he'. been dean . lnce1984. Opening a new chapter in the Martian Chronicles BV Heidi Aapaturlan Speaking this past August at a many Mars aficionados ever since the working in concert like an interplan "It's not cleat what sort of geologic NASA press conference called to herald Viking Lander's soil experimencs came etary one-man band, will monitor and dynamics might have produced this che upcoming launch of Mars Observer, up empty in 1975: has life ever map Mars with a sweep and precision dichotomy," says Albee, alchough he Cal tech Professor of Geology Arden evolved on Mars? Did the planet once that is expected to yield more informa suspects that the answer may start to Albee sounded ar rimes like a man who harbor a bacterial Atlantis that van tion abour the planer's composition, emerge once ic's determined whether had jusc been commissioned to write ished, along with its water, aeons ago? climate, geology, and evolutionary Mars, like Earth, has a magnetic field. the lyrics for the Marcian version of Although no one expects the Mars history than all previous miss ions co Currenc theory holds that a planet'S "America che Beauciful." "We know Observer, launched September 25 from Mars put together. This nonscop glo magnetic field is generated by an "in chat Mars has a volcano, Olympus Cape Canaveral, to fill in all the gaps, bal reconnaissance is similar in scope to cernal dynamo" deep within the plan Mons, shrouded in clouds, chat dwarfs rhere is every expectation that this Magellan's radar-mapping of Venus erary core--the same mechanis m that anyching in che Hawaiian Island mission will usher in a new era ofMar and ro L~nd sa r and Seasac sacellice Sur drives continental places, sculpts chain," he said. "We know it has mas tian exploration and just possibly-a veys of Earth. mountains, and engineers quakes. sive canyons, including one that on suggestion that the conjugation of the "To a certain exrent, we can explai n Mars's field, if it exiscs, must be very Earch would screcch from New York co daces 1492 and 1992 makes difficult ro many features of Mars now, but we weak si nee all previous missions have Los Angeles. Ic has sinuous valleys chat resi sr-a new frontier for human explo explain chern all with only one set of failed to decect it, but Observer is car suggest there was once abundant water ration as well. dara and cannot test our explanations rying a magnetomecer chat should be on che planec. We know thar during Mars has long been considered the against a second sec," Albee says. sensitive enough to do the job. If cercain seasons of the year rhere is a most Earrhlike of rhe sun's orher plan "With Mars Observer, we are going ro Observer's readings show there's no polar cap that waxes and wanes, and we ers. A primary aim of rhe Observer , get a consistent, long-term set of dara field at all, says Albee, chat should be know that in some years chere are dust mission, says Albee, will be to follow chat will allow us to understand whar's an indication that Mars's central heac scorms that envelop the enrire planer." up the many rantali2ing hinrs returned going on in extremely great derail." engine has shut down, Clues ro when However, continued Albee, who is ftom earlier Mars missions rhat rhe As a geologisr, Albee will be pat and why this might have happened will also the Mars Observer project scien planer went rhrough an even more ti cularly interested in finding out chen be soughc in che planet's surface risr, rhere's a lor we don'r know. From Earchlike period in irs past. "We know what's going on with Mars's surface geology. polar cap to polar cap rhere srrecches a from rhe Viking data thar Mars has a geology, whi ch is considerably more "It's also possible," says Albee, "that substantial terrain of unanswered ques vibrant past that seems in many re complex chan che popular image of the something is missing in our picture of rions about rhe Red Planet. Whar spects to resemble Earth's," he says. planet as an endless red tock desert what magnetic fi elds mean: Earth has happened to che wacer chac mosc ex "When and why this vibrancy ceased is under pink skies would suggest. Topo an active fi eld and varied topography, percs who have studied che Viking dara not clear. That's one of the ce ntral graphically speaking, Mars almosr while Mercury has a relacively scrong now believe once flowed copiously questions we're hoping to answer." seems [0 be not one planet, bu t two. field and a dead surface. Mars has both across che planet's surface? How does Observer will reach Mars next Au Its southern half is heavily cratered like dead and varied surface, and a weak or che Marcian climate, which both re gust and go into a polar orbit 250 the moon and appears [0 have been absent field." One intriguing possibil se mbles and differs radically from miles above rhe planet. Ic will ci rcle geologically dead for billions of years, ity is that the Marcian field goes Earth's, behave over the course of the Mars every rwo hours over che course of while its far more Earrhlike noerhero through periods of dormancy, whose entire Marcian year? Did Mars experi one Martian year-687 days. The hemisphere is marked by volcanic C ontinfl,d on page 5 ence a greenhouse effecr ar some earlier spacecraft carries a camera and six re ranges, deep canyons, and landslide period in irs hisrory? Then rhere's the mote-sensing devices. Beginning in basins.-all thought to be signs of question thar's been on the minds of December 1993, rhese instruments, more recent tectonic activity. 2 NIMH establishes CAMPUS campus Center for UPDATE Neuroscience Cal tech has received a $7.7 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to establish a Silvio Conte Center for Neuroscience Research at the Institute. The new Caltech meets NSF center will focus on the ways in which neurons send and receive information grand challenge in the brain and nervous system. "We are trying to understand the Nobel Laureate The National Science Foundation fundamental nature of the processes Rudy Mareu. and hi. wife, Laura, has announced the establishment of a that go on in the brain when we think," said Cal tech Professor of Biol we.. honored by $4 million Grand Challenge Applica the City of tion Group at Caltech. The group will ogy Henry Lester, who wiIJ serve as the Pa.adena In a ce nter's ditector. "We are interested in ceremony la.t study materials-design problems criti the molecules of thought." month. The cal to industry while emphasizing close couple, . hown Neuroscientists have identified and collaboration between university scien h ..e In front of described many proteins involved in City Ha ll, w ill be tists and leading industrial scientists the specialized communication that In Stoc kholm thl. and engineers. month--4or goes on within and among nerve cells. "We want to bridge the gap that ye t a noth.. These discoveries in turn are raising cer e mony. often remains between published important new questions, such as research results and industrial applica how signal pathways are organized tions," said WiIJiam Goddard III, the in different types of neurons, how work of some 29 scientists in eight Charles and Mary Ferkel Professor of mood changes and learning alter these tesearch groups. In addition to Lester, Chemistry and Applied Physics at avenues, and what pathways may the research team leaders are Norman Cal tech and one of the group's princi remain to be discovered. Davidson, the Norman Chandlet Pro Work on Caltech pal investigators. The Cal tech group wiIJ be the fourth fessot of Chemical Biology, Emeritus; Toward that end, cooperating indus Silvio Conte Center for Neuroscience Scott Fraser, the Anna 1. Rosen Profes Women)s Center trial scientists and engineers will spend sor of Biology; Professor of Biology from twO weeks to a year doing re Research, named for the late Massachu setts Congressman Silvio Conte, who Mary Kennedy; Associate Professor of under way search in laboratories at Cal tech, ex introduced the resolution to the House Computation and Neural Systems plaining key industrial problems to of Representatives that proclaimed the Plans are under way to establish a university researchers and working Christof Koch; Assistant Professor of 1990s the "Decade of the Brain." Other women's center at Caltech, to be called with them to extend theoretical tech Biology and Computational and Neural the Cal tech Resource Center for niques to address these difficulties. Conte centers ate based at Stanfotd, Systems Gilles Laurent; Melvin Simon, Women and Center for Women in The participating scientists will Northwestern, and UC San Francisco. the Anne P. and Benjamin F. Biaggini Science and Engineering. A search build on recent breakrhroughs in quan The center, to be based entirely on Professor of Biological Sciences; and committee, headed by Judith Camp tum chemistry, molecular dynamics, the Cal tech campus, wiIJ support the Assistant Professor of Biology Kai Zinno bell, professor of chemistry, and Mary statistical mechanics, and parallel Kennedy , professor of biology, and supercomputing to develop the compu made up of faculty, students, and scaff, tational tools and strategies needed by has been named to conduct the search U .S.

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