Related papers: A New Basis of Geoscience: Whole-Earth Decompressi…
Earth's climate, mantle, and core interact over geologic timescales. Climate influences whether plate tectonics can take place on a planet, with cool climates being favorable for plate tectonics because they enhance stresses in the…
We show that a recently introduced class of electromagnetic composite particles can explain some discrepancies in observations involving heat and helium released from the earth. Energy release during the formation of the composites and…
A model for terrestrial planets, inclusive of viscous fluid behavior and featuring finite normal stress differences, is developed. This work offers new insights for the interpretation of planetary survey data. Evolution equations for…
Most modern theoretical considerations of the physical world suggest that nature is: (1) field-theoretic, (2) smooth, (3) local, (4) gauged, (5) containing fermions, and (6) non-perturbative. Tautologous as this may sound to experts, it is…
We'll examine plate tectonics on Earth -- its features and forces -- and examine some concepts that may allow astronomers to ask useful questions regarding numeric models that putatively predict tectonic activity. But exo-planetologists…
The tectonic regime of rocky planets fundamentally influences their long-term evolution and cycling of volatiles between interior and atmosphere. Earth is the only known planet with active plate tectonics, but observations of exoplanets may…
Models of planet formation are built on underlying physical processes. In order to make sense of the origin of the planets we must first understand the origin of their building blocks. This review comes in two parts. The first part presents…
The theory of Force-Free Electrodynamics (FFE) provides a robust framework for modeling the magnetospheres of compact objects, where the electromagnetic field's energy density dominates the surrounding plasma. Central to this theory is the…
The ability of a planet to maintain surface water, key to life as we know it, depends on solar and planetary energy. As a star ages, it delivers more energy to a planet. As a planet ages it produces less internal heat, which leads to…
Internal-external field separation is crucial for many aspects of geomagnetism, aiming at distinguishing contributions of the magnetic field generated within the Earth (or any other planet) from those produced in the exterior. When data is…
Analysis of the global centroid-moment tensor catalog reveals significant regional variations of seismic energy release to 290 km depth. These variations reflect radial and lateral contrasts in thermomechanical competence, consistent with a…
The timeline of the Earth's history reveals quasi-periodicity of the geological record over the last 542 Myr, on timescales close, in the order of magnitude, to 1 Myr. What is the origin of this quasi-periodicity? What is the nature of the…
The response of many materials to applied forces and boundary constraints depends upon internal geometric changes at multiple submacroscopic levels. Hierarchical structured deformations provide a mathematical setting for the description of…
We provide estimates of volcanism versus time for planets with Earth-like composition and masses from 0.25 to 25 times Earth, as a step toward predicting atmospheric mass on extrasolar rocky planets. Volcanism requires melting of the…
The goal of planet formation as a field of study is not only to provide the understanding of how planets come into existence. It is also an interdisciplinary bridge which links astronomy to geology and mineralogy. Recent observations of…
Limited surface observations of turbulent heat fluxes result in incomplete knowledge about the surface energy balance that drives the climate system. Here, we developed a novel, purely physics-based analytical method grounded on the…
Earth's geodynamo has operated for over 3.5 billion years. The magnetic field is currently powered by thermocompositional convection in the outer core, which involves the release of light elements and latent heat as the inner core…
Kilometer-scale Earth system models are essential for capturing local climate change. However, these models are computationally expensive and produce petabyte-scale outputs, which limits their utility for applications such as probabilistic…
Our understanding of earthquakes is based on the theory of plate tectonics. Earthquake dynamics is the study of the interactions of plates (solid disjoint parts of the lithosphere) which produce seismic activity. Over the last about fifty…
Thermodynamics is commonly presented as a theory of macroscopic systems in stable equilibrium, built upon assumptions of extensivity and scaling with system size. In this paper, we present a universal formulation of the elementary…