Related papers: The Engine of Life
The growth of luminous structures and the building blocks of life in the Universe began as primordial gas was processed in stars and mixed at galactic scales. The mechanisms responsible for this development are not well understood and have…
The Habitable Zone for a given star describes the range of circumstellar distances from the star within which a planet could have liquid water on its surface, which depends upon the stellar properties. Here we describe the development of…
This activity was created within the framework of the "Space for Education" project, which ams at experiencing physical principles on the basis of topics related to space travel. It enables the students to investigate the power supply of…
The rotation of a planet located in the habitable zone of a solar-type star can be reversed by a smooth process associated with the formation of its atmosphere and the increase of stronger torques, opposite to normal tidal torques. Our…
Footprints provide a way to estimate the relative impact of processes and products on the global climate. Including footprint analysis in a course on energy simultaneously provides students with an understanding of this tool and a…
We apply a mathematical model for photosynthesis to quantitatively assess the habitability of a hypothetical planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, inside the so called habitability zone. Results suggest significant viability for primary…
Traditional definitions of the habitable zone assume that habitable planets contain a carbonate-silicate cycle that regulates CO2 between the atmosphere, surface, and the interior. Such theories have been used to cast doubt on the…
This article describes an exemplary robot exercise which was conducted in a class for mechatronics students. The goal of this exercise was to engage students in scientific thinking and reasoning, activities which do not always play an…
We consider a semi-classical model to describe the origin of the spin-orbit interaction in a simple system such as the hydrogen atom. The interaction energy U is calculated in the rest-frame of the nucleus, around which an electron, having…
The Solar System motivates students to interest themselves in sciences, as a large number of concepts may be easily introduced through the observation and understanding of planet's motion. Using a large representation of the Solar System at…
The discovery of a biosphere on another planet would transform how we view ourselves, and our planet Earth, in relation to the rest of the cosmos. We now know Earth is one planet among eight circling our sun; our sun is part of a swirling…
Oxygenic photosynthesis is the most important biochemical process in Earth biosphere and likely very common on other habitable terrestrial planets, given the general availability of its input chemical ingredients and of light as source of…
The motion of astronomical bodies and the centre of mass of the system is not always well perceived by students. One of the struggles is the conceptual change of reference frame, which is the same that held back the acceptance of the…
Heliophysics is the system science of the physical connections between the Sun and the solar system. As the physics of the local cosmos, it embraces space weather and planetary habitability. The wider view of comparative heliophysics forms…
A learning machine, like all machines, is an open system driven far from thermal equilibrium by access to a low entropy source of free energy. We discuss the connection between machines that learn, with low probability of error, and the…
The present work is an attempt to understand and review existing methods of energy generation in electric vehicles in the modern day context. Previous works in the field have proposed various mechanisms of energy generation that are very…
These lecture notes are designed to provide a brief introduction into the phenomenology of active matter and to present some of the analytical tools used to rationalize the emergent behavior of active systems. Such systems are made of…
Synchronously orbiting, tidally-locked exoplanets with a dayside facing their star and a permanently dark nightside orbiting dim stars are prime candidates for habitability. Simulations of these planets often show the potential to maintain…
The Sun's gradual brightening will seriously compromise the Earth's biosphere within ~ 1E9 years. If Earth's orbit migrates outward, however, the biosphere could remain intact over the entire main-sequence lifetime of the Sun. In this…
The term active matter describes diverse systems, spanning macroscopic (e.g. shoals of fish and flocks of birds) to microscopic scales (e.g. migrating cells, motile bacteria and gels formed through the interaction of nanoscale molecular…