David+J.+Stevenson

 =Introduction =

David J. Stevenson was born on September 2, 1948 in New Zealand. He is now currently a researcher at Caltech University and lives in Pasadena, California. He researches our universe and how old the planets are and what they are made of. He also studies how asteroids and our moon were formed, when they were formed, and what they are made of. He is also beginning to research the Earth’s mantle. He realizes that we know so much about our universe, but we know so little about our own planet, what exactly it is made of and how it works. He wants to send a grape fruit sized probe into the center of the earth to collect and send data back to the surface so that we can better understand our planet.

=Contributions=

David J. Stevenson has written and published several different theories and studies that he has researched throughout his life. Some of the publications are “Planetary Magnetism”, “Dynamo Generation of Mercury”, “Does Metallic Ammonium Exist?”, “Hydrogen in the Earth’s Core”, and “Angle of Subduction”. On May 27, 1998 Stevenson was awarded the Harry H. Hess Medal at the AGU Spring Meeting Honors Ceremony. The Harry H. Hess award is given to someone who has researched the evolution of our planet and the other planets that make up our solar system. he has solved and researched some of the most contiversial questions and problems of our time. some of these questions and problems are, "What is the pattern of core dynamics?', "How did the Earth, with its large moon, originate?', and "Why does the Earth's mantle appear to be so close to homogeneous in composition?'. He has contributed much more than just the ones that I have listed, but I do not have the time or energy to list them all.

=Current Research=

Dr. Stevenson is currently teaching a planetary science class at the university of California institute of technology. He is also working on sending a grape fruit sized probe to the center of the earth so that we can further understand the process that the earth’s inner core and mantle are in and what they are doing in these stages. Also to possibly predict what it will do next and when it will do it. Being a planetary science teacher at Caltech, Stevenson realizes that we know so much about space and what is around earth and other planets that we failed to fully understand the planet we live on. In this since he has decided to try to create an object that we can send to the center of the earth to transmit information back to the surface. The information sent back would have data about what the center is made of, how hot it is, if it is truly solid or liquid, and if it is actually what we believe it to be. Stevenson believes that we could be wrong about what is at the center because we rely on seismic waves that surge through the earth during earthquakes to study the center.