Dr robin canup biography for kids

B.S. in Physics, Duke University
Ph.D. in Astrophysics, Planetary and Atmospheric Sciences, .

Dr. Canup joined Southwest Research Institute in Boulder in 1998. Her research utilizes both numerical simulations and analytical models to study the formation and early evolution of planets and their moons. She has modeled many aspects of the formation of the Moon, including hydrodynamical simulations of lunar-forming impacts, the accumulation of the Moon and its initial composition and orbital evolution, and how bombardment may have affected Earth-Moon isotopic compositions. Her models for the origin of the large satellites of the gas giant planets have emphasized the potential early loss of satellites due to gas-driven orbital decay, and how this process may both select for the similar observed ratios between the current satellite system masses and their host planets and provide a potential mechanism to produce icy rings at Saturn. She has also developed models for an impact origin of the satellite systems of Pluto and Mars. Canup was the recipient of the 2003 Urey Prize of the Division of Planetary Sciences and the 2004 Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. She and Professor Phil Christensen (ASU) co-chaired the 2023-2032 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey: "Origins, Worlds, and Life". Canup and her husband and their two children live in the foothills outside Boulder.

Downloadable reprints and preprints
Curriculum Vitae
Downloadable images and animations of potential lunar-forming impacts (from Canup 2004, Icarus)
E-mail address: robin.canup (at) swri.org
Phone: (303) 546-9670

Duke physics alum Robin Canup, ‘90, has been thinking about moons—and their origins—ever since graduate school at the University of Colorado (CU). She was halfway through her PhD thesis on Saturn’s rings when, she says, “I got this idea that I wanted to start working on the origin of the moon. My thesis advisor was very supportive, so I changed the topic of my thesis. I’m forever grateful to him for that.”

In fact, he suggested that she send a grant proposal to NASA, with the result that she had funding for a postdoc at CU as soon as she graduated.

Since then, she’s proposed leading theories not just about our moon, but many other moons as well. “I’m best known for my work on the Earth-moon system because that’s the one that generates the most public interest,” she says. “But I’ve worked on the origin of all the big satellites in the solar system.”

Canup has been a scientist at the Boulder office of the San Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) since 1998. Today she’s Associate Vice President, managing all 80 SwRI scientists in the Boulder office. In 2012, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

In February, she visited Duke to deliver the fifth Hertha Sponer Lecture, in which she spoke about her recent modeling of the catastrophic collision that created the Earth-moon system.

The model that had been around for decades proposed a smallish impactor (say the size of Mars) colliding with an Earth the size of today’s Earth. The problem? The debris field from the collision—the raw ingredients of the moon—would come mostly from the demolished impactor, which almost surely be compositionally different from the Earth. But in fact, the moon and the Earth’s mantle are made of the same stuff.

Learn about how the Moon formed in this conversation with Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute.

Jim Green:One of the fantastic things about the Earth is that it has the Moon. The Moon is so important to us. Why do we even have a Moon? Let’s find out how we got it. I’m Jim Green, NASA’s chief scientist, and we’re here on “Gravity Assist” to talk about the Moon.

I’m here with Dr. Robin Canup, one of the top solar system dynamicists. And what a dynamicist does is really study the motion of things, how they collide, and come together. Robin also manages a major group of planetary scientists at Southwest Research Institute. And today we’re going to talk about the latest theories on the formation of the Moon. Welcome Robin.

Robin Canup:Thank you very much, Jim.

Jim Green: Well, it’s really great to have you here. Ever since planetary scientists looked up, saw the Moon, we were always wondering: how the heck did we ever get such a beautiful body? So what are some of the different theories about the Moon and how it was formed?

Robin Canup: This is, indeed, a very old question in planetary science. Some of the early ideas were known as “capture,” “co-formation,” and “fission.” So “capture” just proposed that the Moon formed independently from the Earth and that during a close flyby, enough energy with dissipated that it was captured into a bound orbit around the Earth. “Co-formation” imagined that as the Earth was accumulating material and growing, the Moon grew alongside it.

And then, finally, “fission” imagined that the Earth was once rotating so rapidly that it became unstable, and it became more and more oblate at its equator until the material that eventually formed the Moon was ejected from its equator regions. So those are traditional theories, but act