Morgan L. Cable THE TALK: Exploring Ocean Worlds

www.ihmc.com

15 S.E. Osceola Avenue Downtown Ocala

Co-hosted by:

April 20, 2023

Reception:

Begins at 5:30 p.m.

Talk:

Begins at 6:00 p.m.

Seating is limited

RSVP to ihmc-20230223.eventbrite.com or call 352-387-3050

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Our solar system is host to multiple ocean worlds - planets and moons that contain oceans of liquid, usually water, either on their surfaces or underneath icy crusts. These worlds are prime targets of exploration due to NASA’s quest to ‘follow the water’ and may contain all three ingredients for life as we know it - water, chemistry, and energy. Could life exist in the oceans of Enceladus or Europa? Could even stranger life have emerged in the liquid methane lakes of Titan? Dr. Cable will cover our current state of knowledge of these ocean worlds, and discuss some current missions and future mission concepts to explore their plumes, surfaces, and ocean depths.

Morgan L. Cable is the Co-Deputy PI of the Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) Instrument aboard the Mars 2020 (Perseverance) rover and the Science Lead for the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) Project. She has worked on the Cassini Mission, is a Co-Investigator of the Dragonfly mission to Titan, and is serving multiple roles on the Europa Clipper mission. Currently Dr. Cable performs laboratory experiments to study the unique organic chemistry of Titan. She and colleagues were the first to discover minerals made exclusively of organics that may exist on Titan’s surface. Morgan also conducts fieldwork in extreme environments on Earth, searching for life in places such as the Atacama Desert, ice fields at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, nutrient-limited lakes at the base of Wind Cave (the densest cave system in the world) in South Dakota, fumarole-generated ice caves of the Mount Meager stratovolcano in Canada, and lava fields of Iceland.

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In his 2022 veto message, DeSantis pointed to concerns about the bill (SB 1796) allowing ex-spouses to have existing alimony agreements amended.

“If CS/CS/SB 1796 were to become law and be given retroactive effect as the Legislature intends, it would unconstitutionally impair vested rights under certain preexisting marital settlement agreements,” the governor wrote.

Jan Killilea, who founded the “First Wives Advocacy Group” Facebook group a decade ago, said she “unleashed an angry mob” when she began speaking out against a proposal aimed at retroactively eliminating permanent alimony in 2013.

Killilea said she opposes the current bill, in part, because it does not include enforcement provisions requiring exspouses to fulfill alimony obligations.

Killilea said her ex-husband owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in alimony payments but the courts haven’t forced him to pay the money. She predicted the bill would have dire consequences for older women whose sole source of income is alimony.

“It’s really sad that we’re the ones that this bill will affect, but we have no voice,” she said.

The bill, slated to be considered Thursday by the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee, has created a panic for the First Wives group women, who’ve banded together on Facebook and Twitter.

“It’s a mess. It’s an absolute mess,” said Camille Fiveash, a 62-year-old Milton woman who was married for 30 years and whose permanent alimony payments are her main source of income.

Fiveash is among women who contend that permanent alimony is their only armor against destitution and homelessness. Most of the alimony recipients didn’t work outside the home while raising children and supporting their former husbands as the men climbed the career ladder.

Many of the women said they agreed to give up assets such as family homes or retirement investments in exchange for permanent alimony, which they believed would last their lifetime.

“I’m going to be destitute and dependent on the state and I’m going to be collecting food stamps and everything else,” Fiveash said.

Along with doing away with permanent alimony, this year’s proposal would set a five-year limit on rehabilitative alimony. Under the plan, people married for less than three years would not be eligible for alimony payments, and those who have been married 20 years or longer would be eligible to receive payments for up to 75 percent of the term of the marriage.

The identical House and Senate bills also would allow alimony payors to seek modifications if “a supportive relationship exists or has existed” involving their exspouses in the previous year. Critics such as Doyel argue the provision is vague and could apply to temporary roommates who help alimony recipients cover living expenses for a short period of time.

This year’s version of the bill does not include a controversial provision that would have required judges to begin with a “presumption” that children should split their time equally between parents. Scott largely pinned his 2016 veto of an alimony bill on a similar child-sharing provision. The Family Law Section fiercely opposed the inclusion of the child-sharing provision in previous iterations of the alimonyreform proposals.

Wartenberg said he found the exspouses’ objections to the current proposal perplexing.

“I cannot really explain it other than fear of what has come before and perhaps a concern that this is doing the same thing that we believe prior bills were trying to do. We certainly don’t see it that way. In fact, we were the ones that were pushing for this language, last year, to be included,” he said. “We’re pleased with the product, as it is currently written.”