| April 30, 1999 Media Contact: Jan
Jennings, (619) 822-1684
DIVERSITY AND RICHNESS OF JUPITER’S SATELLITE SYSTEM TO BE EXPLORED BY CAL
TECH PLANETARY SCIENTIST MAY 17 AT UCSD
The diversity and physical richness of Jupiter’s satellite system as
revealed by the Galileo spacecraft will be discussed by planetary scientist David J.
Stevenson at 4 p.m. May 17 in the Robinson Building Complex Auditorium at the University
of California, San Diego. The event is free and open to the public.
Stevenson is a professor of geological and planetary sciences at the California
Institute of Technology. His lecture, A Remarkable Planetary System: The Galilean
Satellites, is part of UCSD’s Hans E. Suess Memorial Lecture series.
Stevenson will discuss the general properties of the system, with emphasis on Io’s
volcanism, evidence for water oceans in Europa and Callisto, and Ganymede’s dynamo
and thermal history. He will speculate on how the satellites formed, how this differs from
the formation of our planetary system, and the nature of livable satellites around giant
planets discovered in other planetary systems.
A native of New Zealand, Stevenson was educated at Victoria University in Wellington
and received his doctorate from Cornell University in New York. He is the recipient of
numerous prizes and honors and has written more than 100 papers on his areas of research.
The late Professor Suess, affiliated both with UCSD and Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, made significant and lasting contributions on fields as diverse as
archaeology and astrophysics. The Hans E. Suess Memorial Lecture series is sponsored by
the UCSD Division of Natural Sciences. For further information call 534-4786. |
