Related papers: Floating Cities, Islands and States
We show that adsorbates on surfaces can form islands even if there are no attractive interactions. Instead strong repulsion between adsorbates at short distances can lead to islands, because such islands increase the entropy of the…
An analysis of databases of photographic images of ocean's surface, taken from various altitudes and for various types of rough ocean surface, revealed the presence of an ocean's skeletal structures (OSS). The OSSs differ from the formerly…
We hypothesise that planets are made by tidal downsizing of migrating giant planet embryos. The proposed scheme for planet formation consists of these steps: (i) a massive young protoplanetary disc fragments at R ~ several tens to hundreds…
A longstanding puzzle in urban science is whether there's an intrinsic match between human populations and the mass of their built environments. Previous findings have revealed various urban properties scaling nonlinearly with population,…
Several groups have recently suggested that small planets orbiting very closely around white dwarf stars could be promising locations for life to arise, even after stellar death. There are still many uncertainties, however, regarding the…
The TRAPPIST-1 system provides an extraordinary opportunity to study multiple terrestrial extrasolar planets and their atmospheres. Here we use the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Atmosphere Model version 4 to study the…
How should government and business solve big problems? In bold leaps or in many smaller moves? We show that bespoke, one-off projects are prone to poorer outcomes than projects built on a repeatable platform. Repeatable projects are…
In this article we look at the potential of cloud containers and we provide some guidelines for companies and organisations that are starting to look at how to migrate their legacy infrastructure to something modern, reliable and scalable.…
A city is not a tree but a semi-lattice. To use a perhaps more familiar term, a city is a complex network. The complex network constitutes a unique topological perspective on cities and enables us to better understand the kind of problem a…
Robots are increasingly tested in public spaces, towards a future where urban environments are not only for humans but for autonomous systems. While robots are promising, for convenience and efficiency, there are challenges associated with…
Challenges due to the rapid urbanization of the world -- especially in emerging countries -- range from an increasing dependence on energy, to air pollution, socio-spatial inequalities, environmental and sustainability issues. Modelling the…
A mechanical system consisting of water covered by brash ice and a body freely floating near equilibrium is considered. The water occupies a half-space into which an infinitely long surface-piercing cylinder is immersed, thus allowing us to…
A small planet is not necessarily a terrestrial planet. Planets that form beyond the snow line with too little mass to seed rapid gas accretion (<~ 10 Earth masses) should be rich in volatile ices like water and ammonia. Some of these…
Globally ice-covered oceans have been found on multiple moons in the solar system and may also have been a feature of Earth's past. However, relatively little is understood about the dynamics of these ice-covered oceans, which affect not…
Climate models simulate a strong land-ocean contrast in the response of near-surface relative humidity to global warming: relative humidity tends to increase slightly over oceans but decrease substantially over land. Surface energy balance…
As a result of the climate change the situation in Arctic area leads to several important consequences. On the one hand, oil and gas resources can be exploited much easier than before. Thus, one can already observe discussions on disputed…
Models of thermal evolution, crustal production, and CO$_2$ cycling are used to constrain the prospects for habitability of rocky planets, with Earth-like size and composition, in the stagnant lid regime. Specifically, we determine the…
The efficiency of urban logistics is vital for economic prosperity and quality of life in cities. However, rapid urbanization poses significant challenges, such as congestion, emissions, and strained infrastructure. This paper addresses…
This article presents an optimization-based approach for sizing and composition of an Arctic offshore drilling support fleet considering cost-efficiency. The approach studies the main types of duties related to Arctic offshore drillings:…
The stability of Earth's climate on geological timescales is enabled by the carbon-silicate cycle that acts as a negative feedback mechanism stabilizing surface temperatures via the intake and outgas of atmospheric carbon. On Earth, this…