PhD position: "Deciphering the origin of micrometeorites " - LGL-TPE (UMR 5276)

Short description

The PhD position is proposed for a 3-year period (36 months). The legal gross salary is €1768 per month (plus social benefits). An annual €2 000 package for travels and equipment will be allotted. The candidate is expected to submit a thesis manuscript to the university of Lyon for a formal presentation in front of a jury before the end of the 3-yr period.

Starting date of the contract: October the 1st, 2021

Research project

The extra-terrestrial matter that is deposited on Earth consists of large bodies (meteorites with a size ranging from a few cm to a few km) and small bodies (<1mm) called micrometeorites. There is a consensus about the fact that meteorites that represent less than 0.1% of the mass accreted by Earth every year come from the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. The origin of small grains, however, has been a topic of debate over the past decades with essentially two possible proposed origins, with various arguments either in favor of an asteroidal origin or cometary.

The goal of this PhD project is to get a better understanding of the origin of these grains by measuring the abundance of cosmogenic nuclides for a group of micrometeorites or individual micrometeorites (collected in Greenland, Antarctica or on the seafloor), together with modelling cosmogenic nuclides production rates.