Tea in the Atrium Room: 307

Colloquium Room: 307 Title: Curiosity and Perseverance: Expanding our Understanding of the Martian Surface Abstract: Our understanding of the Red Planet is evolving as we continue to receive data from the ongoing activities of NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. In this talk, we will review the questions driving our exploration of the martian surface, take a look at the some of the basic data derived from rover science, and explore some of the fundamental difficulties of interpreting data from the surface of another planet. We will particularly focus on issues familiar to all of science: our current state of knowledge, intrinsic bias and the assumptions we make and the questions we ask, and the necessity of integrating information across both discipline and scale.