I want to try and get into those kinds of places. It's very important to make devices for life detection on Mars, for example. ... Any planet or moon with a solid surface will do.

The way communal insects behave with respect to each other produces very elaborate, complex behavior of the total, but the actual rules that any individual uses to relate to its fellows can be very simple. The critical thing is how does the swarm behave? Can we direct the individuals enough that the overall motion of the entire swarm is in the direction we want to proceed?

The individual units are very cute and very adorable. But the function of them as an ensemble is where the real strategy lies.

That kind of a no-doubt-about-it pond with minimal shallow excavation could be a goldmine of microfossil material! I'd want to sample its beautiful rims ... and do a small core down through the middle somewhere.

My overall fossil-hunting bias is heavily weighted to natural caves and fissures and overhangs. I know from personal experience how these environments serve as both original home for organisms and as great places to preserve the evidence.

With adequate funding, we think we could do this in six or seven years.

I'm particularly excited about the sulfate results...because so much of the material we are looking at is in sulfur rich caves where gypsum and other sulfate minerals play a huge role in the biology and the subsequent preservation of traces of that biology.