Jolitz HeritageJolitz Heritage Site - Chronicling the Legacies of the Jolitz Family of Silicon Valley, including the accomplishments of William Jolitz, Lynne Jolitz, Rebecca Jolitz, Ben Jolitz, and William Leonard Jolitz. [ Jolitz Heritage > Items Published, Talks, Comments, Buzz, ... ] |
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Rock with a High Albedo Scattering Experiment: A Determination of Likelihood for Martian Hypolithic Bacteria
March 19, 2010, Reno, NV. Junior Science and Humanities Regional Symposium.Rock with a High Albedo Scattering Experiment: A Determination of Likelihood for Martian Hypolithic Bacteria , Rebecca Dawn Jolitz . Conference Presentation. Recently, hypolithic cyanobacteria, bacteria that survive on light scattered and transmitted to the underside of translucent rocks, have been discovered in the Atacama Desert, an on-Earth analogue to Mars. Hypolithic cyanobacteria could explain the Viking Lander positive results for autotrophic bacteria. A Monte Carlo simulation was created to simulate scattering within such high albedo rocks and calculate transmission of light (transmittivity) through the rock. Due to differences in atmospheric opacity, calculated Monte Carlo transmittivity had to be multiplied by Martian atmospheric opacity. Two models simulating scattering were written by myself in Python 3.1 and tested, a 2D model and a 3D model. Final transmittivity for the 2D model is 5.876% ± 0.0457% and for the 3D model is 31.17% ± 0.0486%, so life might be present on Mars as hypolithic bacteria.
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