Welcome to my home page!
Currently I am an Associate Reseracher in the Institute for Geophysics
and Planetary Physics at UCLA.
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The topography of Venus.
Animation by
William B. Moore
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I am investigating a variety of topics involving geodynamic modeling of
planets and satellites including the Earth, Moon, Venus, Mars, and the
large satellites of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto). One
part of my research involves the analysis of geophysical data of the
Earth and other planetary bodies, mostly collected by satellites. The
spinning globe of Venus on the left is an example. It uses topography
data collected by the Magellan mission to Venus which ended in 1992.
I've color coded low regions to be blue and green, and high regions to
be orange and red and even white so that you can see where the
mountains and broad plateaus of Venus are. Click on it to go to the
Face of Venus, a web interface to the Magellan data.
The main part of my research is devoted to the construction of
geodynamical models for interpreting and understanding the geophysical
data I and others have analyzed. The models I use are really just
mathematical descriptions of the systems (planets) I study. The
equations that describe the behavior of the Earth and other planets are
difficult to solve in their entirety. Instead of sitting down with a
pencil and a piece of paper and trying to solve them,
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Animation of a simulated mantle plume rising beneath a moving plate.
by William B. Moore
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I use big and fast computers to find approximate (but very very close)
solutions. The fun part is trying to find out what the solutions tell you
about the behavior of real planets. For example, the animation on the
right shows what happens when a hot plume of mantle material rises beneath
a moving oceanic plate (the idea is that this is what is happening to
cause the Hawaiian islands and other hotspot chains). I've made
the ocean and the oceanic lithosphere underneath it invisible so you can
see the plume (the teal blob) rising and spreading out under the lithosphere.
But it does more than just spread out. The little dimples that form in
the top of the teal blob are actually small droplets of lithospheric
material forming and dripping downward through the plume head. This tells
me that the plume is thinning the oceanic lithosphere, because the droplets
that come off are replaced by mantle material which gets closer to the
surface than it was before.
Find out more about my
Research Interests
Curriculum Vitae
Publications and Presentations
Copyright © 2001, William B. Moore, all rights
reserved.
