ALIENS MGA (LAST ONE)

History may show that people have consistently assumed that inhabited worlds exist, only to have consistently been proven wrong...
SETI may have been unsuccessful for 50+ years...
We may see zillions of galaxies, none of which show evidence of a Type III civilization...
The Kepler mission and other searches for exoplanets may have found that solar systems like ours are not usual...

But many people are convinced that Aliens are everywhere!

This is an "at-home" assignment that you will present to the class.

Presentations will be during Week 13.

You are to turn in your own unique work – this is not a “group” assignment.

There are two parts to this assignment, both of which must be completed to get credit for the assignment:

1) Look up Ockham’s Razor -- find a formal definition of the Razor, and write it down. Include the source you used for your definition. Then write a paragraph describing what it means in your own words. This needs to be typed. This should look like this:

*FORMAL DEFINITION OF OCKHAM’S RAZOR
*SOURCE
*YOUR PARAGRAPH

You will turn this in.

2) Then, find the best story about aliens that you can find that isn’t about Betty and Barney Hill or Travis Walton. Bizarre stories are great, but the story must purport to be “true”. In other words, we do not want a story about a scientist saying aliens don’t exist, or even a story about whether life once existed on Mars. We want a story about real aliens, conspiracies, abductions, cover-ups, secret bases, alien technology, true sightings, and unnamed experts. You will then give a short (approx 3 minute) presentation to the class about what you found. Your presentation must include a “low-tech” visual aid, such as a poster, model, costume, handout (make sure you have enough for everyone), etc.

If you think the story is believable from a scientific perspective, highlight in your presentation what makes it believable. And in particular, you must mention whether or not you find the story to truly be more believable than Santa Claus or Coke Machine elves (and be prepared to defend your opinion). If it is not believable, highlight stuff that violates the spirit of Ockham’s Razor.

This is to be a NO SCREEN presentation (no computer screen, no projector screen, no phone screen, etc). If you find something from the web or Youtube, incorporate that into your low-tech presentation. For example, if you find a video that is good, you might consider capturing some screen shots from that video (for example, I captured the image below from a YouTube video by hitting <ALT> PRINTSCREEN and then pasting it into this file) and then putting them into a handout or printing them out to use on a poster, etc., and then summarizing the video for the class.

3) Earth option – if you prefer, instead of aliens, you can find a story about Earth-bound “life” such as elves, sasquatches, trolls, etc. The “life” must be plausibly “intelligent” – no mystery giant catfish in the Ohio River, no Loch Ness monster (unless the claim is that it is intelligent). The “life” must be also be “alive” – no ghosts, no zombies, etc.

4) Special bonus to anyone who brings in a real, live alien or a functioning alien space ship (must give rides to the class, must go at least to the moon but warp drive across the galaxy is preferable): Automatic ‘A’ in AST 101! Bonus also applies for bringing a real troll, sasquatch, etc.

Grading – everyone who completes the assignment (must have Ockham’s paragraph, 3 minutes, no Travis or Betty-Barney, visual aid, no tech) will get an A (95%). We will also rate the presentations – the top one as rated by the class (each person gets a vote – the professor also gets a vote that is no greater and no less than a student’s vote) will get 100%. Please remind me to do this vote – I sometimes forget.