Planetary Lunch Series (PLS) – Sarah Steele (Harvard)

Abstract: The early martian dynamo may have played a key role in the planet’s climatic evolution and habitability, with its termination potentially triggering the shift to Mars’s present cold and dry climate. The dynamo’s cessation also marks the end of convection in the martian core with potentially important implications for its thermal properties and composition. Although Mars’s magnetic history is key to understanding the planet’s early climate and deep interior, several important properties of the dynamo—most critically, the timing of its cessation—remain uncertain. In this talk, I will discuss our work to understand Mars’s magnetic history by pairing martian meteorite paleomagnetism and large impact basin magnetization modeling. Our results suggest that a long-lived but reversing martian dynamo could simultaneously satisfy constraints from old weakly magnetic impact basins, young magnetized volcanics, and meteorite paleomagnetism.

About this Series: The MIT Planetary Lunch Seminar [PLS] is a weekly seminar series organized within the EAPS department. Colloquia topics span the range of research interests of the department’s planetary sciences research program. The seminars take place on Tuesdays from 12:15–1:30 pm, unless otherwise noted (term-time only). Speakers include members of the MIT community and visitors. Talks are intended to appeal to graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, and faculty with a background in planetary science. For more information and Zoom password contact: planetary-org@mit.edu.