Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Microbes in outer Space

The article I had chosen to write about was a ted talks, that Penelope Boston our guest speaker had been a part of. When she was in class her presentation was really fascinating, it got my immediately intrigued with the idea of extraterrestrial life based off of microbes. During her lecture she had mentioned some truly interesting idea of exploration on mars and other planets with machinery, and that idea is what introduced her notion, the notion of There might just be life on Mars. In this analysis I will try to examine her notion, as well as expand upon that identifying her strengths and weaknesses of her argument.

Her initial PowerPoint begins with a strong introduction to who she is and why she studying what she is involved in now. This strengthens her argument because it shows us how reliable she is. Next she involves the earth’s environment and the interesting microbes that inhabit the caves of our world. Immediately she explains how earth could give answers to possible ways to find extraterrestrial life since some of the microbes that inhabit our world of possibly present on other planets. She explained how lava tubes are places that are formed after lava has gone through an area and this is where microbes might inhabit. These types of systems are found on the planets we are discovering. The last thing she explains was the certain equipment that is being developed that will allow us to research such things. The types of machinery would be a hopping microbot swarm, she then explained the ways this machinery would do its research and the strengths it had.

This video was really interesting, Penny does a really good job of explaining the reasons why we would want to invest our time and research into her beliefs. Right at the beginning she establishes her credibility, as well as backing every piece of information she introduces with facts and data. Her entire argument is really strong she makes sure to make it interesting as much as she can with really cool pictures, the only thing she could improve upon is perhaps shorten her introduction to who she is, although it is really good to incorporate this information I felt like she dragged it on and it was too excessive, perhaps including more information on research already done in outer space could make her argument more interesting. But all in all the presentation was really fascinating, and really gets the viewer think of the possibilities for outer space exploration and life which was her purpose for the presentation.


Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWvXyobH9fg
Image 1 : https://ksj.mit.edu/sites/default/files/images/tracker/2007/itcamefromouterspace.jpg
Image 2 : http://i.space.com/images/i/000/032/806/iFF/comet-elements-life.jpg?1379366296

2 comments:

  1. That was great how you provided the video. The video definitely added a better understanding to your blog and I definitely agree on what you critiqued Penny on. She provided a lot of great information but I can definitely agree that she takes quite too much time introducing herself but overall the power point/video presentation was great. How did you find out about the video? You can really see the analysis you provided for her powerpoint and right away I knew the type of post you were doing great job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I found the video on Tedtalks.com it has alot of different microbial subjects that can all prove to be beneficial to this class. Thanks for thinking it was a good analysis I really enjoyed watching her presentation and critiquing it, in particular the best part was her explaining the possible machinery being developed to research extraterrestrial microbes.

    ReplyDelete