作者: James R. Zimbelman

Dr Ralph Lorenz trained as an engineer (B.Eng. Aerospace Systems Engineering, Southampton 1990) and worked for a year for the European Space Agency ESA on the design of the Huygens probe and its instruments. He then spent three years obtaining a Ph D at the University of Kent at Canterbury building part of the Surface Science Package which measured Titan’s surface properties in January 2005. In 1994 he moved to the University of Arizona for postdoctoral research, where his interests have included Titan, Mars, climate, nonequilibrium thermodynamics and instrumentation. He continues these researches as a member of the Senior Professional Staff at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University, where he moved in August 2006. Relevant to the present book, he has published several papers on dust devils, surface modification processes, and Aeolian processes – most recently reporting the discovery of massive fields of sand dues on Titan. Lorenz has written over 100 papers in rherefereed literature and over 20 polular articls in magazines such as Spaceflight, Astronomy Now and New Scientist. James Zimbelman has been a Geologist at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C for nearly 20 years. His principal interest is Planetary Geology – Geologic analysis of remote sensing data of Mars, geologic mapping of Mars and Venus, study of long lava flows on the terrestrial planets and field studies of volcanic, aeolian and pluvial features. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers and maps and several hundred abstracts