Related papers: The Engine of Life
This activity has been developed as a resource for the "EU Space Awareness" educational programme. As part of the suite "Our Fragile Planet" together with the "Climate Box" it addresses aspects of weather phenomena, the Earth's climate and…
This activity has been developed as a resource for the "EU Space Awareness" educational programme. As part of the suite "Our Fragile Planet" together with the "Climate Box" it addresses aspects of weather phenomena, the Earth's climate and…
We present a thermodynamics experiment suitable for first year undergraduate students employing Stirling Engines to create a demonstration of energy transformation and to measure the mechanical efficiency of such engines. Using an…
Photosynthetic life requires sufficient photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) to metabolise. On Earth, plant behaviour, physiology and metabolism are sculpted around the night-day cycle by an endogenous biological circadian clock. The…
The circumstellar habitable zone and its various refinements serves as a useful entry point for discussing the potential for a planet to generate and sustain life. But little attention is paid to the quality of available energy in the form…
When searching for inhabited exoplanets, understanding the boundaries of the habitable zone around the parent star is key. If life can strongly influence its global environment, then we would expect the boundaries of the habitable zone to…
If life is sustained by a process of photosynthesis, not necessarily the same existing on Earth, the surface temperature of the star and the orbit of the host planet cannot be whatsoever. In fact the global life cycle, no matter how…
With the use of the appropriate technology, such as photovoltaics and seawater desalination, humans have the ability to sustainably increase their production of food and energy while minimising detrimental impacts on the Earth system.
The quest for life in the Universe is often affected by the free use of extrapolations of our phenomenological geocentric knowledge. We point out that the existence of a living organism, and a population of organisms, requires the existence…
This paper explores the idea that information is an essential and distinctive feature of living systems. Unlike non-living systems, living systems actively acquire, process, and use information about their environments to respond to…
The habitable fraction of a planet's surface is important for the detectability of surface biosignatures. The extent and distribution of habitable areas is influenced by external parameters that control the planet's climate, atmospheric…
The aim of my dissertation is to investigate habitability in extra-Solar Systems. Most of the time, only planets are considered as possible places where extraterrestrial life can emerge and evolve, however, their moons could be inhabited,…
A solar cell is a heat engine, but textbook treatments are not wholly satisfactory from a thermodynamic standpoint, since they present solar cells as directly converting the energy of light into electricity, and the current in the circuit…
Earth is the only planet known to harbor life and, as a result, the search for habitable and inhabited planets beyond the Solar System commonly focuses on analogs to our planet. However, Earth's atmosphere and surface environment have…
The dynamic nature of life's ability to thrive in diverse and changing planetary environments suggests that habitability and survival depend on the evolutionary path and life adaptation to environmental conditions. Here we explore such…
From life on other planets to virtual classrooms this thesis spans a wide array of research topics all based on how we see other worlds. Our understanding of everything from moon phases, the planets in our Solar System, and exoplanet…
Planetary rotation rate is a key parameter in determining atmospheric circulation and hence the spatial pattern of clouds. Since clouds can exert a dominant control on planetary radiation balance, rotation rate could be critical for…
The Sun is expected to increase its radiant output by about 10% per billion years. The rate at which the radius of the Earth's orbit would need to increase in order to keep the present value of the Sun's radiant flux at the Earth constant…
The potential habitability of an exoplanet is traditionally assessed by determining if its orbit falls within the circumstellar `habitable zone' of its star, defined as the distance at which water could be liquid on the surface of a planet…
We propose a dedicated model to assist with the life cycle analysis of emissions of scientific computing centres. The model takes into account both the embodied carbon and emissions from use, as well as other factors such as data centre…