Related papers: What future for the Anthropocene? A biophysical pe…
Whether our universe with present day acceleration can eventually collapse is very interesting problem. We are also interesting in such problems, whether the universe is closed? Why it is so flat? How long to expend a period for a cycle of…
Life is a planetary feature that depends on its environment, but it has also strongly shaped the physical conditions on Earth, having created conditions highly suitable for a productive biosphere. Clearly, the second law of thermodynamics…
The spotlight is on the intertwined nature of sustainability and energy transition. As the world grapples with environmental challenges, the push for a green approach to energy is more crucial than ever. This transition promises not just a…
Global warming arises from 'temperature forcing', a net imbalance between energy fluxes entering and leaving the climate system and arising within it. Humanity introduces temperature forcing through greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture,…
This paper describes some of the astronomical effects that could be important for understanding the ice ages, historic climate changes and the recent temperature increase. These include changes in the sun's luminosity, periodic changes in…
Are time-travels possible? is the past still existing? and is the future already existing? We try to give an answer to these an other questions concerning the properties of time and the close connection (but deep physical difference)…
The existence of a positive and possibly varying Lambda-term opens a much wider field of possibilities for the future of our Universe than it was usually thought before. Definite predictions may be made for finite (though very large)…
Earth system analysis is the study of the joint dynamics of biogeophysical, social and technological processes on our planet. To advance our understanding of possible future development pathways and identify management options for…
This chapter is dedicated to the slow dynamics of the climate system, at time scales of one~thousand to one million years. We focus specifically on the phenomenon of ice ages that has characterised the slow evolution of climate over the…
Earth will become uninhabitable within 2-3 Gyr as a result of the moving boundaries of the habitable zone caused by the increasing luminosity of the Sun. Predictions about the future of habitable conditions on Earth include a decline in…
In a recent study (Garrett, 2011), I described theoretical arguments and empirical evidence showing how civilization evolution might be considered from a purely physical basis. One implication is that civilization exhibits the property of…
Archean atmospheric evolution is the transition from an abiological atmosphere, to an atmosphere for which the composition and therefore climate is highly altered by life. We review the key processes and transitions in this evolution.
The climate change attribution problem is addressed using empirical decomposition. Cycles in solar motion and activity of 60 and 20 years were used to develop an empirical model of Earth temperature variations. The model was fit to the…
The influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (ALife) technologies upon society, and their potential to fundamentally shape the future evolution of humankind, are topics very much at the forefront of current scientific,…
A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time. Reproduction has a…
For more than four decades, scientists have been trying to find an answer to one of the most fundamental questions in paleoclimatology, the `faint young Sun problem'. For the early Earth, models of stellar evolution predict a solar energy…
A classification scheme for rocky planets is proposed, based on a description of the Earth System in terms of the Landau-Ginzburg Theory of phase transitions. Three major equilibrium states can be identified and the associated planetary…
This paper explores the evolution of the so called "anthropic reasoning" in a historical perspective. It takes under scrutiny the appearance of "anthropic" considerations in various stages of modern cosmology, focusing also on some very…
The Hadean, once thought to be uninhabitable and tumultuous, has more recently been recontextualized as a clement time in which oceans, land, and life likely appeared on Earth. This non-exhaustive chapter follows multiple threads from…
From a modern perspective cosmology is a historical science in so far that it deals with the development of the universe since its origin some 14 billion years ago. The origin itself may not be subject to scientific analysis and…