Related papers: Viewing Earth's surface as a soft matter landscape
One of the basic concepts of modern physics with a long prehistory is a fluid, which means a substance that flows under an applied shear stress. In this sense fluids form a wide subset of the phases of matter that includes liquids, dense…
This paper collects some characteristic aspects of the general model-building framework of the mechanics of complex bodies, that are bodies in which the material substructure influences prominently the gross behavior through interactions…
The aversion of hydrophobic solutes for water drives diverse interactions and assemblies across materials science, biology and beyond. % Here, we review the theoretical, computational and experimental developments which underpin a…
Large terrestrial planets are expected to have muted topography and deep oceans, implying that most super-Earths should be entirely covered in water, so-called waterworlds. This is important because waterworlds lack a silicate weathering…
We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…
Magnetic fields are everywhere in the Universe and in our everyday life and many processes are affected by their presence, generating a rich phenomenology that depends also on other possible external agents. We review here some results,…
Polymorphism rationalizes how processing can control the final structure of a material. The rugged free-energy landscape and exceedingly slow kinetics in the solid state have so far hampered computational investigations. We report for the…
We investigate the equilibrium properties of a colloidal solution in contact with a soft interface. As a result of symmetry breaking, surface effects are generally prevailing in confined colloidal systems. In this Letter, particular…
Solvent evaporation in soft matter solutions (solutions of colloidal particles, polymers and their mixtures) is an important process in material making and in printing and coating industries. The solvent evaporation process determines the…
The giant impact hypothesis for Moon formation successfully explains the dynamic properties of the Earth-Moon system but remains challenged by the similarity of isotopic fingerprints of the terrestrial and lunar mantles. Moreover, recent…
The principles of Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics are disclosed leading to a new way to interpret whole-Earth dynamics. Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics incorporates elements of and unifies the two seemingly divergent dominant theories…
Granular materials such as sand, powders, and grains are omnipresent in daily life, industrial applications, and earth-science [1]. When unperturbed, they form stable structures that resemble the ones of other amorphous solids like metallic…
Various problems of geometry, topology and dynamical systems on surfaces as well as some questions concerning one-dimensional dynamical systems lead to the study of closed surfaces endowed with a flat metric with several cone-type…
Granular materials such as sand, powders, and food grains are ubiquitous in civil engineering, geoscience, agriculture, and medicine. While the influence of friction between the grains on the static structure of these systems is well…
Glasses are amorphous solids whose constituent particles are caged by their neighbors and thus cannot flow. This sluggishness is often ascribed to the free energy landscape containing multiple minima (basins) separated by high barriers.…
Soft materials with a liquid component are an emerging paradigm in materials design. The incorporation of a liquid phase, such as water, liquid metals, or complex fluids, into solid materials imparts unique properties and characteristics…
The flow of Earth's upper mantle has long been considered to occur by slow and near-continuous creep. Such behaviour is observed in classical high-temperature deformation experiments and is a fundamental component of geodynamic models.…
Earth has a unique surface character among Solar System worlds. Not only does it harbor liquid water, but also large continents. An exoplanet with a similar appearance would remind us of home, but it is not obvious whether such a planet is…
Ordinary baryonic particles (such as protons and neutrons) account for only one-sixth of the total matter in the Universe. The remainder is a mysterious "dark matter" component, which does not interact via electromagnetism and thus neither…
In this review we discuss several aspects of Cosmic Voids. Voids are a major component of the large scale distribution of matter and galaxies in the Universe. They are of instrumental importance for understanding the emergence of the Cosmic…