Related papers: Bifurcation in the growth of continental crust
A balanced ratio of ocean to land is believed to be essential for an Earth-like biosphere and one may conjecture that plate-tectonics planets should be similar in geological properties. After all, the volume of continental crust evolves…
The long-term carbon cycle is vital for maintaining liquid water oceans on rocky planets due to the negative climate feedbacks involved in silicate weathering. Plate tectonics plays a crucial role in driving the long-term carbon cycle…
The recent discovery of super-Earths (masses less or equal to 10 earth-masses) has initiated a discussion about conditions for habitable worlds. Among these is the mode of convection, which influences a planet's thermal evolution and…
The ongoing discovery of terrestrial exoplanets accentuates the importance of studying planetary evolution for a wide range of initial conditions. We perform thermal evolution simulations for generic terrestrial planets with masses ranging…
The existence of plate tectonics on the Earth is directly dependent on the internal viscosity contrast, mass of the planet, availability of liquid water and an internal heat source. However, the initial conditions of rotational velocity and…
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…
Aims: The long-term carbon cycle for planets with a surface entirely covered by oceans works differently from that of the present-day Earth because inefficient erosion leads to a strong dependence of the weathering rate on the rate of…
Carbonate-silicate weathering feedback is thought to stabilize Earth's climate on geologic timescales. If climate warms, faster mineral dissolution and increased rainfall speed up weathering, increasing CO2 drawdown and opposing the initial…
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…
Context: The long-term carbonate-silicate cycle plays an important role in the evolution of Earth's climate and, therefore, may also be an important mechanism in the evolution of the climates of Earth-like exoplanets. Aims: We investigate…
The hydrogen isotopic (D/H) ratio reflects the global cycling and evolution of water on Earth as it fractionates through planetary processes. We model the water cycle taking seafloor hydrothermal alteration, chemical alteration of…
Recent observations and theoretical progress made about the history of the Earth-Moon system suggest that tidal dissipation in oceans primarily drives the long term evolution of orbital systems hosting ocean planets. Particularly, they…
It is likely that unambiguous habitable zone terrestrial planets of unknown water content will soon be discovered. Water content helps determine surface land fraction, which influences planetary weathering behavior. This is important…
In the expanding Earth framework it is possible to find additional phenomena that could contribute in a proper way to the water balance and general tectonic eustatism involved in the sea lever rising. Recent compilations seems to leave…
Earth's tectonic processes regulate the formation of continental crust, control its unique deep water and carbon cycles, and are vital to its surface habitability. A major driver of steady-state plate tectonics on Earth is the sinking of…
Pressure is a key parameter in the physics and chemistry of planet formation and evolution. Previous studies have erroneously assumed that internal pressures monotonically increase with the mass of a body. Using smoothed particle…
The scaling of plate-tectonic convection is investigated by simulating thermal convection with pseudoplastic rheology and strongly temperature-dependent viscosity. The effect of mantle melting is also explored with additional…
Water and land surfaces on a planet interact with gases in the atmosphere and with radiation from the star. These interactions define the environments that prevail on the planet, some of which may be more amenable to prebiotic chemistry,…
The continental plates of Earth are known to drift over a geophysical timescale, and their interactions have lead to some of the most spectacular geoformations of our planet while also causing natural disasters such as earthquakes and…
Orbital forcing plays a key role in pacing the glacial-interglacial cycles. However, the mechanistic linkages between the orbital parameters - eccentricity, obliquity, and precession - and global ice volume remain unclear. Here, we…