Format:  17 multiple choice questions, 6 images/diagrams--you may need to draw on one or more of them, 9 short answer/essay questions, 24 true-false questions.

The exam is cumulative, which means that there is material from the midterm on this exam--refer to the study guide for the midterm for that portion of the test.

I have updated ALL of the class notes.

Additional things you should know:  Earth and Venus are the only terrestrial planets in our solar system that cool both by plumes and by convection.  On Earth, this gives us plate tectonics.  New oceanic crust is created at divergent boundaries, and old oceanic crust is destroyed at convergent boundaries.  Olympus Mons on Mars and Hawaii on Earth are examples of hot spot/plume volcanoes.

Venus' and Mars' atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide with a small amount of carbon dioxide
Earth's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, with a hefty abundance of oxygen in second place.
Saturn's moon Titan has an atmosphere with a higher surface pressure than the Earth's. Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with a small amount of methane as second abundant--Titan's surface pressure and temperature is near the triple point of methane.  We see solid water ice and organic molecules (tholins) on Titan's surface.  The sand in the sand dunes are organic molecules.  We see stream channels that look like one's on Earth, but could not have been carved by water.In order to generate an intrinsic magnetic field, a planet or moon need to have a conducting liquid in its interior and a "relatively" rapid rate of rotation.  Planets and moon's are heated by a variety of heat sources (tidal heating, leftover accretional heat, decay of radioactive elements, etc.), not just one.

Mars - we spent a lot of time there.
Viking experiments;  Labeled Resease LR, Gas Exchange GEX, Pyrolitic Release, PR - of these 3, only LR gave a positive result (positive for fresh sample, no reaction for sterilized sample).  The Gas chromatograph mass spec (GCMS) didn't find any organic molecules and is the experiment that convinced most people there was no evidence for life on Mars.
Rocks on Mars are mainly basaltic lava flows--many contain olivine, which weathers easily.  Weathering products that imply water include hematite, phyllosilicates, and carbonates.  Phoenix found permafrost and ice sheets.  You should definitely know how to define permafrost.  The martian meteorites are all silica-poor (mafic and ultramafic) rocks that cooled directly from magma.  Some are geologically young (much less than half a billion years old, while others are ancient).  What convinced scientists these meteorites were from Mars, was pockets of trapped martian gas in glass formed during the impact that lofted the rock off of Mars.  The oldest channels on Mars are valley network channels, which look like normal Earth streams and suggest rain fell on Mars.  At a more recent time (but still old) we see outflow channels - caused when ground collaped (creating chaotic terrain), and huge catastrophic floods of water went streaming over the landscape, carving new channels as they went.  Mars is not currently generating a magnetic field.

Understand what is meant by "water hole", "wow signal", and "arecibo signal".  Fermi's Paradox basically says if there are so many civilizations out there, why aren't we aware of them.  The Drake equation is an attempt to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy.

Galilean satellites of Jupiter: closest to farthest:  Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto.  Only Ganymede (which is the largest satellite in the solar system and larger than Mercury) seems to be generating an intrinsic magnetic field.  Europa has a young water ice crust and is believed by many to be the most likely place for life elsewhere in our solar system.  The amount of geological activity is a function of distance from Jupiter.

Titan is a satellite of Saturn and is the second largest in the solar sysstem.

We spent a lot of time on exoplanets.  I may show you data and ask you which technique was used to find a planet.  For each technique, astrometry, radial velocity/doppler, direct imaging, transits, gravitational microlensing, you should understand whether or not the data CAN show you multiple planets, and how you need to view the planetary system (edge on or from above).  TheHubble space telescope has obtained our only image of an exoplanet takenn in visible light.

Regarding origin of life - understand the difference between a monomer (which is easily made in a lab) and a polymer (which is not).  There are four broad categories of each that correlate with each other

Monomer: corresponding Polymer
sugar: carbohydrate
fatty acid: lipid
amino acid: protein
nucleotide (phosphate+sugar+base): nucleic acid