Related papers: The Engine of Life
A key item of interest for planetary scientists and astronomers is the habitable zone, or the distance from a host star where a terrestrial planet can maintain necessary temperatures in order to retain liquid water on its surface. However,…
Geometric mechanics provides valuable insights into how biological and robotic systems use changes in shape to move by mechanically interacting with their environment. In high-friction environments it provides that the entire interaction is…
Photosynthesis is central to Earth's biosphere and a prime candidate for sustaining complex life on habitable exoplanets, yet a thermodynamically consistent treatment of the work potential of stellar radiation at planetary surfaces is still…
One of the most exciting scientific challenges is to detect Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of other stars in the galaxy and search for evidence of life. The ability to observe and characterise dozens of potentially Earth-like…
Dozens of habitable zone, approximately earth-sized exoplanets are known today. An emerging frontier of exoplanet studies is identifying which of these habitable zone, small planets are actually habitable (have all necessary conditions for…
From the numerous detected planets outside the Solar system, no terrestrial planet comparable to our Earth has been discovered so far. The search for an Exo-Earth is certainly a big challenge which may require the detections of planetary…
Computation, if treated as a set of physical processes that act on information represented by states of matter, encompasses biological systems, digital systems, and other constructs, and may be a fundamental measure of living systems. The…
Solar activity is controlled by the magnetic field, which also causes the variability of the solar irradiance that in turn is thought to influence the climate on Earth. The magnetic field manifests itself in the form of structures of…
Physics students now have access to interactive molecular dynamics simulations that can model and animate the motions of hundreds of particles, such as noble gas atoms, that attract each other weakly at short distances but repel strongly…
In this Habilitation Thesis, I synthesize 10 years of work on the role of the motor system in sensorimotor decision-making. First, a large part of the work we initially performed (2014-2020) questioned the functional role of the motor…
Active systems across scales, ranging from molecular machines to human crowds, are usually modeled as assemblies of self-propelled particles driven by internally generated forces. However, these models often assume memoryless dynamics and…
For over half a century, scientists have contemplated the potential existence of life within the clouds of Venus. Unknown chemistry leaves open the possibility that certain regions of the Venusian atmosphere are habitable. In situ…
The deep (~100 km) ocean of Europa, Jupiter's moon, covered by a thick icy shell, is one of the most probable places in the solar system to find extraterrestrial life. Yet, its ocean dynamics and its interaction with the ice cover have…
Energetic particles, in the form of stellar energetic particles and cosmic rays, can lead to disequilibrium chemical effects in exoplanetary atmospheres. In Earth-like atmospheres, energetic particles can drive the formation of prebiotic…
Motility is characteristic of life, but a common basis for movement has remained to be identified. Diverse systems in motion shift between two states depending on interactions that turnover at the rate of an applied cycle of force. Although…
Transport at microscopic length scales is essential in biological systems and various technologies, including microfluidics. Recent experiments achieved self-organized transport phenomena in microtubule active matter using light to modulate…
Two circumbinary planets have been recently discovered by TESS. The main aim of this work is to explore whether it is possible, besides the discovered circumbinary planet, to have an Earth-like planet within the habitable zone of the…
The Planetary Boundary for Climate Change has been surpassed, and humanity must therefore decide on a pathway back to the safe operating space below the Planetary boundaries to minimise the risk of deleterious or even catastrophic…
At present, because of observational selection effects, we know of no exoplanetary systems with any planetary masses close to that of the Earth. We have therefore used computer models to see whether such planets could be dynamically stable…
Understanding the thermodynamic function of life may shed light on its origin. Life, as are all irreversible processes, is contingent on entropy production. Entropy production is a measure of the rate of the tendency of Nature to explore…