The following project is to be a two page (single-space type written, or four pages double-spaced) paper. At the bottom of this page is a list of paper subjects for you to choose from. This project will be worth two homework grades (50 points). You must address some/most of the following issues (some of which MAY OR MAY NOT be relevant depending on the actual topic of the paper). Everyone must answer #5:

1) What was society like (what ideas, religions, themes dominated) at the time when this idea was promoted or when this person was working on this problem? And/or when was this person born, when and where did they live and do their work, and when did they die?
2) What was the upbringing or social circumstances of the person that is at the center of this subject/controversy/discovery?
3) When was this problem first investigated, or when was the solution first proposed? How was this idea received by society and/or the scientific community at the time, and what is our current view of this idea?
4) Describe what types of observations/data were used, or what theory proposed that led to the discovery that is the subject of this paper.
5) Why did YOU choose this particular subject.

You MUST use at least two different sources ("references") for your research paper. While one of these could be our textbook (only if desperate), the other must be some other source besides my class notes. This could be a webpage, a magazine article, or a library book. When you are writing this paper and you cite information you obtained from such a reference, you must indicate this in some way, and then at the end of a paper list your references as shown in these (mythical) examples:

M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy, is located 2 million light years from Earth, and is the brightest galaxy visible in the northern hemisphere and has a mass of 200 billion solar masses (Harrison 2006). It is a spiral galaxy with a black hole at the center....
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References
Harrison, T. 2006, "The Nature of Galaxies", (Dover:San Francisco), p27.

M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy, is located 2 million light years from Earth, and is the brightest galaxy visible in the northern hemisphere and has a mass of 200 billion solar masses¹. It is a spiral galaxy with a black hole at the center....
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¹Harrison, T. 2006, "The Nature of Galaxies", (Dover:San Francisco), p27



DO NOT PLAGIARIZE! If you copy something word for word (verbatim), you must put quotes around it and cite (preferably with a footnote) where you got that information. If you just cut and paste from the web, or copy large parts of your paper from any sources, you will get ZERO credit. It is extremely easy for me to identify such cheating, so don't even try. Read the material, digest it, and rewrite it in your own words. When do you cite reference material? You must always cite your references if you are using verbatim quotes. The other type of material that must be cited is when you quote specific numbers or observations about a particular object/subject that are not common knowledge. In the examples above, you probably do not know that the Andromeda galaxy is located 2 million light years from Earth and that it has a mass of 200 billion solar masses. Thus you should cite the source where you got this bit of information. But when you read material from several sources it will be clear to you that the Andromeda galaxy is the brightest galaxy in the northern hemisphere and that it is a spiral galaxy. In this case you do not have to cite those tidbits. There is a danger of making your paper hard to read if you put citations in your paper for every little bit of information in your paper... it takes practice to know when to cite something, and when such a citation is not needed. Use your own judgement--if you were reading your paper for the first time, what are the types of information in your paper that a reader might want to go to the original source for? That is the type of information that needs citation.

1) Detail the role of each of the following people in the "Heliocentric revolution" (that is the change-over from the Geocentric view of the Universe to the Heliocentric view): Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo

2) Describe the mission, and discoveries of the "Martian rovers" (Spirit and Opportunity)

3) Describe the strange and peculiar satellites (moons) of Saturn as viewed by the Cassini mission. (Not including Titan)

4) Describe the mission and the results of the Huygens probe that penetrated the atmosphere and landed on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.

5) Explore the recent discoveries of large Kuiper belt objects (e.g., "UB313") and Pluto's relationship with them, including a brief discussion of the "New Horizons" mission.

6) Discuss the four "Galilean" satellites of Jupiter, and the possibility that one (or more) of them may be a possible host for life, and how NASA is planning to search for that life.

7) Write a short biography of Galileo, and his battles with the church over his heliocentric philosophy.

9) Detail what advances in technology will be needed, and describe what will be necessary (food, power, etc.), for a trip to Mars.

10) Describe the new discoveries of the Messenger mission to Mercury.

^*In the past I have had many students write papers about Pluto. While Pluto is an acceptable choice note that some subjects are harder to find information on than others. Pluto is far away, and we do not know very much about it. It can be difficult to find enough interesting stuff to construct a research paper without lots of work on a subject like Pluto.