Thomas Davison
Thomas M. Davison
Growth of a crater after an impact into a porous meteorite parent body
A 3-D oblique collision simulation
Postdoctoral Research Scholar
Phone: (773) 702-3808
Email: tdavison [at] uchicago.edu
Office: Hinds 473
Research interests:
My primary research focuses on trying to understand the processes that were acting on some of the earliest solid bodies in the Solar System (planetesimals) that would go on to form the terrestrial planets and asteroids. The collateral effects that hypervelocity collisions between planetesimals have on the thermal history of these bodies has never been fully quantified. With my collaborators Dr. Fred Ciesla of the University of Chicago, Dr. Gareth Collins of Imperial College London and Dr. David O’Brien of the Planetary Science Institute, I aim to quantify in detail all aspects of planetesimal collisions.
Arthur H. Compton Lectures:
Last quarter I delivered the Arthur H. Compton Lecture series for the Enrico Fermi Institute at the Univeristy of Chicago. The series of public lectures was titled Constructing the Solar System: A Smashing Success, and ran from October 6 to December 15 2012. More information about the Compton Lectures can be found on the Enrico Fermi Institute website.
Information about the lecture series, including slides and handouts, can be found here.
Publications:
- Davison, T.M., Ciesla, F.J. and Collins, G.S. (2012) Post-impact thermal
evolution of porous planetesimals. Geochimica et
Cosmochimica Acta, 95, pp. 252-269(18)
- Davison, T.M., Collins, G.S., Elbeshausen, D., Wünnemann, K. and Kearsley, A.T. (2011) Numerical modeling of oblique hypervelocity impacts on strong ductile targets Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 46:10, pp. 1510-1524(15)
- Collins, G.S., Elbeshausen, D., Davison, T.M., Robbins, S.J. and Hynek, B.M. (2011). The size-frequency distribution of elliptical impact craters Earth and Planetary Science Letters 310:1-2, pp. 1-8(8)
- Davison, T.M., Collins, G.S. and Ciesla, F.J. (2010). Numerical modeling of heating in porous planetesimal collisions Icarus, 208:1, pp. 468-481(14)
- Pierazzo, E., Artemieva, N., Asphaug, E., Baldwin, E.C., Cazamias, J., Coker, R., Collins, G.S., Crawford, D.A., Davison, T., Elbeshausen, D., Holsapple, K.A., Housen, K.R., Korycansky, D.G. and Wünnemann, K. (2008) Validation of numerical codes for impact and explosion cratering: Impacts on strengthless and metal targets. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 43:12, pp. 1917-1938(22)
- Davison, T. and Collins, G.S. (2007) The effect of the oceans on the terrestrial crater size-frequency distribution: Insight from numerical modeling. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 42:11, pp. 1915-1927(13)
Education:
- PhD in Planetary Sciences, Imperial College London, 2007-2010
- MSci in Geology and Geophysics, Imperial College London, 2002-2006