astronomy.swinburne.edu.au/sao/students/instructors.xml -
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Published on: 2/18/2009
Last Visited: 4/11/2009
HET602 Exploring the Solar System: Kurt Liffman
Dr Kurt Liffman has a B.Sc.(Hons) in Mathematics from the University of Melbourne and PhD in astrophysics from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University (Houston, TX).
Kurt has worked on problems related to the formation of the Solar System at NASA's Johnson Space Center (Houston, TX) and AMES Research Center (Mountain View, CA).
Kurt currently works full time at the CSIRO and part time with SAO.
He is also a visiting scientist at the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology and works with the Planetary Science Institute at the Australian National University.
Around a decade ago, Kurt published a theory suggesting that the some major components in meteorites (and, possibly, the planets) were formed in the early Solar System by bipolar jet flows that existed in the first few million years of the Solar System.
This theory has grown in popularity and has obtained some preliminary experimental confirmation from the Stardust mission.
It is now one of the leading theories for understanding the formation of the foundation stones of the planets.
Kurt, Dr Sarah Maddison and Prof. Geoff Brooks are currently building a research team at Swinburne University to investigate how material was processed in the early solar nebula .