THURSDAY OCTOBER 10 - 4 PM
MAXWELL M. THIEMENS
G-TIME LAB, UNIVERSITÉ LIBRE DE BRUXELLES
ABSTRACT: The rocks brought back from the Apollo missions fundamentally changed how we, as Earthlings, view the Moon. Even 50 years after Apollo 11, we are still gaining new insights into the formation and history of the Moon from these samples. The Hafnium-Tungsten decay system is one of the keys for timing planetary formation, but understanding the behavior of tungsten is the key to fine tuning this timescale. This talk will be a presentation of the history of the Moon (and that it formed 50 million years after solar system formation), how new data have fine tuned what we know about the Moon's formation (that processes involved with the crystallization of the Moon elevated the Moon's Hf/W), and what the implications of this are (the unique signature of the Moon doesn't require late accretion).
BIO: Maxwell M. Thiemens is a post-doctorate researcher at the laboratory G-TIME of the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. He earned his bachelors degree at the University of California, San Diego in Geophysics, his masters in Geochemistry at Washington University in St Louis, and defended his doctorate, titled "Isotope Planetology," at the University of Cologne. His research interests include the formation and evolution of planets and life.