The Carleton Geology Department would like to announce a public talk on January 19 given by the Bernstein Geologist-In-Residence, Professor Geoffrey Collins of Wheaton College, Massachusetts. The talk title is: Exploring ocean world geology with the Europa Clipper mission. 

Short description:

Jupiter’s moon Europa has fascinated planetary scientists ever since the Voyager encounters in 1979.  Data from the Galileo mission in the late 1990s revealed a world unique in our solar system, with several kilometers of warm, geologically active ice floating atop a salty ocean larger than all of Earth’s oceans combined.  Galileo left us with many questions, including: Does the ocean water ever come up to the surface?  Do radiation-processed chemical compounds ever make it down into the ocean?  What processes form the bizarre ridges and pits all over the surface?  Is the surface shaped by an icy version of plate tectonics?  Come and learn how we are designing the Europa Clipper mission to answer our geological questions about Europa, and the path we have mapped out to discover if Europa’s ocean is habitable for life as we know it.

Speaker: Geoffrey Collins ’94 was a Carleton geology major who went on to get a Ph.D. at Brown University, and is now a geology professor at Wheaton College in Massachusetts.  While at Brown, he worked on the first data coming back from the Galileo mission at Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Europa.  He has been involved in the exploration of the outer solar system ever since, interpreting data from the Cassini and New Horizons missions, and helping to craft NASA’s strategy for planetary exploration.  Geoff currently co-chairs the Geology Working Group for the Europa Clipper mission, and he is a member of the spacecraft camera team.

The talk will be given at Carleton College Olin Hall Room 141 at 4:30 p.m. Friday January 19.  

 Please contact Tami Little (tlittle@carleton.edu) or Mary Savina (msavina@carleton.edu) in the Geology Department for more information, including more detailed instructions about where the room is located.