HON 225 Project ideas Topics must be approved by the instructor. Not all topics work equally well in terms of amount of material available for a project. If the material seems thin, you might want to discuss with the instructor how you might broaden your research subject to included related topics. Origin of the Moon: Did Earth once have two moons? Should Pluto be a planet? Current planet classification system (dwarf planets) Potential impactors Apophis and 1999 RQ36 How the Earth will die (astronomically) Kuiper Belt (history, description, evidence): Did the Solar System eject a fifth giant planet? Oort Cloud (history, description, evidence): Periodic comets; Did the Oort Cloud capture objects from other stars in its birth cluster? Dark matter? Apollo asteroids SNC et al. (Martian) meteorites Lunar meteorites Meteor showers Detection of asteroids, comets in space Protecting Earth from damaging impacts. B612 Sentinel project Environmental effects of giant impacts: e.g., KPg boundary 65 Ma ago Evidence for primordial gas 2 Ga after big bang Tunguska End Pleistocene extinctions Formation of cosmic dust Cosmic radiation/Solar wind Discovery of planets outside the solar system Origin of water on the Earth Precious/semi-precious gemstone composition, classification, marketing Synthetic gemstone formation Diamonds in meteorites Widmanstätten patterns in iron meteoritesEveryday radiation hazards(e.g., radon, cigarettes, airport security, medical tests, etc.) Manmade mineral: trinitite How do we know where meteorites come from? The meteorite parent body Supernovas Neutron stars/pulsars Black holes Red giants, white dwarfs Recent meteorite impact near misses Chance of impact (history, evidence for The Torino Impact Hazard Scale) Was life on Earth seeded from space (panspermia)? Is there evidence for life in Martian meteorites? Are giant impacts periodic? Geology/mechanism of crater formation Atmospheric perturbations resulting from giant impacts (e.g., hypercanes) Dawn at Vesta: parent body of howardite-eucrite-diogenite (HED) meteorites? Chelyabinsk impact Heliospheric "depletion region" (data from Voyager 1) Are we living in the Anthropocene? Colossal impact 3.26 Ga Gravity waves Oldest mineral on Earth What other planets/moons in solar system could support