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There is increasingly more evidence being accumulated for the occurrence of large amounts of organic material in the cosmos, particularly in the form of aromatic compounds. These molecules can be found on the surface of Earth and Mars, in…
The population of close-in super-Earths, with gas mass fractions of up to 10% represents a challenge for planet formation theory: how did they avoid runaway gas accretion and collapsing to hot Jupiters despite their core masses being in the…
Some entities, such as humans, survive longest if their environment is neither too hot nor too cold, and the sun is no exception. It is rather obvious that if the sun were enclosed inside a thermally conducting sphere surrounded by a heat…
Small-satellites and CubeSats offer a low-cost pathway to access Low Earth Orbit at altitudes of 450 km and lower thanks to miniaturization and advancement in reliability of commercial electronics. However, at these low altitudes,…
Future missions to Mars and Venus will make use of aerobraking and aerocapture in order to gain mass through the saving of fuel at planetary arrival. So far only aerobraking has been demonstrated, if the Mars Premier project has paved the…
We present a new, magnetohydrodynamic mechanism for inflation of close-in giant extrasolar planets. The idea behind the mechanism is that current, which is induced through interaction of atmospheric winds and the planetary magnetic field,…
Author suggests and researches a new revolutionary idea for a closed-loop irrigation method. He offers to cover a given site by a thin closed film with controlled heat conductivity and clarity located at an altitude of 50 300 m. The film is…
Habitable planets are commonly imagined to be temperate planets like Earth, with areas of open ocean and warm land. In contrast, planets in snowball states, where oceans are entirely ice-covered, are believed to be inhospitable. However, we…
It has been demonstrated that lunar dust simulant can be efficiently lofted and removed from various room temperature surfaces in vacuum when exposed to a low-energy electron beam. This provides a potential solution to the well-known dust…
Exploration of Mars has been made possible using a series of landers, rovers and orbiters. The HiRise camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has captured high-resolution images covering large tracts of the surface. However, orbital…
There are four different stable climate states for pure water atmospheres, as might exist on so-called "waterworlds". I map these as a function of solar constant for planets ranging in size from Mars size to 10 Earth-mass. The states are:…
We propose a non-steady state model of the global temperature change. The model describes Earth's surface temperature dynamics under main climate forcing. The equations were derived from basic physical relationships and detailed assessment…
A radiative-convective climate model is used to calculate stratospheric temperatures and water vapor concentrations for ozone-free atmospheres warmer than that of modern Earth. Cold, dry stratospheres are predicted at low surface…
Recognizing whether a planet can support life is a primary goal of future exoplanet spectral characterization missions, but past research on habitability assessment has largely ignored the vastly different conditions that have existed in…
The solar atmosphere shows anomalous variation in temperature, starting from the 5500 K photosphere to the million-degree Kelvin corona. The corona itself expands into the interstellar medium as the free streaming solar wind, which…
The ultimate climate emergency is a "runaway greenhouse": a hot and water vapour rich atmosphere limits the emission of thermal radiation to space, causing runaway warming. Warming ceases only once the surface reaches ~1400K and emits…
The extent to which a magnetosphere protects its planetary atmosphere from stellar wind ablation depends upon how well it prevents energy and momentum exchange with the atmosphere and how well it traps otherwise escaping plasma. We focus on…
The goal of this paper is to explore the potential multistability of the climate of a planet around the habitable zone. A thorough investigation of the thermodynamics of the climate system is performed for very diverse conditions of energy…
Metasurfaces can be designed to achieve prescribed functionality. Careful meta-atom design and arrangement achieve homogeneous and inhomogeneous layouts that can enable exceptional capabilities to manipulate incident waves. Inherently, the…
The quest for other habitable worlds and the search for life among them are major goals of modern astronomy. One way to make progress towards these goals is to obtain high-quality spectra of a large number of exoplanets over a broad range…