David John Stevenson (born 2 September 1948) is a professor of planetary science at Caltech. Originally from New Zealand, he received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in physics, where he proposed a model for the interior of Jupiter. He is well known for applying fluid mechanics and magnetohydrodynamics to understand the internal structure and evolution of planets and moons.
Sending a probe into the Earth
Stevenson's tongue-in-cheek idea about sending a probe into the earth includes the use of nuclear weapons to crack the Earth's crust, simultaneously melting and filling the crack with molten iron containing a probe. The iron, by the action of its weight, will propagate a crack into the mantle and would subsequently sink and reach the Earth's core in weeks. Communication with the probe would be achieved with modulated acoustic waves.[1][2] This idea was used in the book Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception.
Honors and awards
In 1984, he received the H. C. Urey Prize awarded by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.
Stevenson is a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.[3]
Minor planet 5211 Stevenson is named in his honor.[4]
See also
References and sources
- ^ "bbc:Plumbing the Earth's depths". BBC News. 14 May 2003. Retrieved 2 January 2010.
- ^ "A Modest Proposal: Mission to Earth's Core" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 June 2010. Retrieved 23 July 2009.
- ^ "Origin of the moon | Royal Society". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
- ^ "(5211) Stevenson". (5211) Stevenson In: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names. Springer. 2003. p. 448. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7_5048. ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7.
