The Geodynamics group at UCLA consists of faculty Gerald Schubert and Paul Tackley, post-doctoral researcher William B. Moore, and graduate students John Hernlund, Susanna Musotto, Shunxing Xie, and Tim Smith. Recent graduates include R. David Baker who is now at Austin College, J. Todd Ratcliff at JPL, and Adrian Lenardic who is on the faculty at Rice University. We are part of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at UCLA and are affiliated with the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP).

Geodynamics is a broad field that, much like geophysics, has no hard and fast definition. In fact, we leave the hard and fast to the seismologists, while we turn our attention to the soft and slow, particularly the very slow (but nonetheless chaotic) flow of the rocks that make up the Earth's interior or the very soft motions of the Earth's atmosphere. As if the Earth weren't interesting enough, members of the group are involved in researching the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter and the interiors of Venus, Mars, and the large moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, through the Galileo Mission to Jupiter.

Animation of a simulated mantle plume rising beneath a moving plate by William B. Moore

The dynamics we study are almost entirely driven by the transfer of heat. This is generally known as thermal convection. The sun provides the heat for the Earth's atmosphere, and the decay of radioactive elements (mostly potassium) is the source of heat in the Earth's interior. Like most scientists, we are fond of mathematical models as a way of describing nature, not because we think that's the best way to study it, but because we in particular don't have 4.5 billion years to run another experiment. Fortunately for us, nature did run a few extra experiments, but she hasn't left her lab notebook lying around, so we study other planets to compare and contrast our experiences with Earth. With sufficient simplification, we can bring the mathematical models within range of our analytical skills, but mostly we rely on computers to do the work for us. The results are probably best appreciated after a fifteen hour day in front of the monitor, but you're welcome to give the following a try:

A "virtual" Venus (William B. Moore).