CSI 801 Project

Life on Mars

The chances of anything coming from Mars, were a million to one, they said...
Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds

On August 7, 1996, NASA held a press conference announcing the discovery of possible evidence of ancient life on Mars. The evidence for this discovery is available in the August 12 issue of Science Magazine, and is available from Science On-Line.

If this result is confirmed, it may be the biggest scientific result in this century. The signficance of this discovery might rival Darwin's Origin of the Species and the Copernican Revolution. It might fundimentally change our view of life and its origin.

Your CSI 801 project must deal with some aspect of this discovery. It does NOT have to involve biology AND chemistry AND astronomy AND physics, but it probably will involve some elements from at least one of these fields. Your define a problem which is relevent to this discovery, and can be addressed through computer simulations. Possible topics include

what was the maximum temperature inside the meteorite during re-entry?
what temperatures can the compounds inside the meteorite survive without sublimating?
is such a microbial colony viable and sustainable?
how much contamination of the sample might be expected from the Earth's atmosphere?
what is the minimum physical size or DNA length of an organism?
what structural forces are exerted on the meteor during its journey inside the Antarctic glacier?

There are lots of other questions which need to be answers, so please do not feel limited by the above examples.

This project represents 25 points of your class grade. For every day a milestone is delayed, you will loose 1 point.

Team Composition

You will be part of 3 or 4 person team during this project. The members of your team will be chosen randomly. In the real world, it is likely that you will not be able to choose your collegues. Picking members randomly also helps randomize abilities so teams have approximately equal strengths and backgrounds.

Each team member must keep a short journal of activities during the semester. This can be just a paragraph per week, but is essential to let me know what activities YOU did for the group project. This journal will be kept confidential.

Every report must specify exactly what each group member did.

Project Milestones

For this project, you will be required to complete five intermediate milestones. Each of these milestones represents a deliverable product and has a specific due date.

These milestones are:

September 19, 1996

Project Definition

By September 19, your group must have conducted a basic literature review and defined what specific scientific question you wish to address using simulations. A three page report of the literature (including references) along with a basic statement of the problem must be included. This document must be placed on the Web in at least one group member's html directory. You do not have to define HOW you are going to solve this problem.

October 3, 1996

Numerical Methods and Simulation Plan

By October 3, your group must have defined the simulation method you will use to solve this problem and the associated numerical method. This is report should include about three pages of description of the science to be simulated, the approximations to be used, and the associated numerical methods. You do not have to specify the exact structure of the code, but you must explain what the basic elements of the code will be.

October 24, 1996

Technical Plan

By October 24, your group must have formulated a technical plan for implementation. This should include programming standards, software specifications, and a plan for testing and validation. Each of these sections should be about two to five pages, and may be combined into a single document. A block diagram of the code and pseudo code representations of the functions must be included in this plan.

November 14, 1996

Software Implementation

By November 14, you should have your code running and tested following the technical plan created above. You need to have basic documentation written about the codes function by this time, as well as a documented set of trial runs which validate your code. This report should be about five pages.

November 29, 1996 (yes, Thanksgiving)

Written Report

A report of the code results should be created by November 29. The results should address what parameters were used in the simulation and what the results were. You must have a section with the conclusions listed, especially how these conclusions relate to the scientific question posed at the beginning of the project. This project report should be about five pages long.

December 3, 1996

Oral Presentation

Each group should prepare an oral presentation of there project. This should include elements of all project phases. Time will be very limited, so you will not be able to give all the details of your project. All group members should be able to answer questions about this project.