Wed 14th January @ noon
Abstract:
With its almost inexistant erosion, the lunar surface preserves a good record of the early Earth-Moon system evolution. Over the past decade, lunar science has benefited from a rapid increase in international interest. Many missions from different space agencies have shed a new light on our closest neighbor, but also raised many questions.
The Moon possesses a clear dichotomy in geological processes between the nearside and farside hemispheres. The most pronounced expressions of this dichotomy are the strong concentration of radioactive heat sources on the nearside in a region known as the Procellarum KREEP Terrane (PKT), and the mare basaltic lava flows that erupted in or adjacent to this terrane. There is no consensus regarding the extent and cause of this enrichment.
In parallel, improved paleomagnetic measurements of Apollo samples from several groups have strengthened the idea of a long lasting magnetic field. From a period of strong intensity of several hundred millions years (similar in amplitude to Earth’s field), the field decayed by almost two orders of magnitude. Several processes exist to generate a lunar magnetic field, but their relative contribution is debated.
In this presentation I will show integrated evolution models of the lunar mantle and core to discuss both volcanic activity and magnetic field generation and discuss possible implications for the early stages of lunar evolution.
Short bio:
I obtained my PhD degree from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP), under the supervision of M. Wieczorek and D. Breuer, working on the long term evolution of Earth’s moon. I am now working at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) in Tokyo, Japan. I am interested in how different processes shape the long term evolution of planets. In particular, I’d like to use insights from exoplanetary statistics to improve our understanding of planets in the Solar System.
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