Life As We Know It - Team 3

My goal is to communicate information about Life On Earth. Listed on the card is what Team 3 at the Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp chose to represent Life On Earth to a hypothetical alien species. What would you choose? Please submit your suggestion in the log and send me on my continuing mission!

From June 14 to June 26, 2009, the ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer School Camp was held on the campus of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. A total of 50 middle school students in grades 5, 6 and 7 with proven expertise and interest in math and science took part in a two week session concerning the topic of Astrobiology and "The Quest For Life". The goal of the Science Camp was for the students to propose a mission to search for life on another planet. During the two exciting weeks, students went on several field trips to The Albany Pine Bush, New York State Museum, Herkimer Diamond Mine, Museum of Natural History. They were privileged to watch the launch and follow the mission of the LRO and LCROSS spacecraft during the camp. Students also took many classes and completed many activities dealing with topics such as life, astronomy, space exploration, the cosmic calendar, the Drake Equation, and satellites and geocaching.

It was the study of satellites and an involved geocaching exercise that provided the motivation for hiding this cache. You may be familiar with the two Golden Records that were sent along with each of the Voyager spacecraft. Taking the idea of the Golden Record, what we had the kids do is come up with their own list of objects that would introduce alien species to life on Planet Earth. Our eight teams wrote their lists on index cards, which were then laminated. They were registered as travel bugs and dropped in the Life As We Know It cache (GC1V3R1).

We hope that just as the records on Voyager are traveling the universe, our more local versions will travel the global neighborhood of Earth and inspire you to think about the possibility of life elsewhere. What would you choose to offer as proof of life on Earth? Feel free to ponder this question and leave your suggestions in the log.