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Human activity continues to have an enormous negative impact on the ability of the planet to sustain human and other forms of life. Six out of the nine planetary boundaries have been crossed, a seventh is close to threshold. Prominent…
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…
We present constraints on models of cosmology and astrophysics using cosmic shear data vectors from three datasets: the northern and southern Galactic cap of the Dark Energy Camera All Data Everywhere (DECADE) project, and the Dark Energy…
If the Milky Way is populated by WIMPs as predicted by cosmological models of the large-scale structure of the universe and as motivated by SUSY, the capture of high-mass WIMPs by the Sun would affect the temperature, density and chemical…
Using smoothed particle hydrodynamics we model giant impacts of Super-Earth mass rocky planets between an atmosphere-less projectile and an atmosphere-rich target. In this work we present results from head-on to grazing collisions. The…
We review how machine learning has transformed our ability to model the Earth system, and how we expect recent breakthroughs to benefit end-users in Switzerland in the near future. Drawing from our review, we identify three recommendations.…
During the era of global warming and highly urbanized development, extreme and high impact weather as well as air pollution incidents influence everyday life and might even cause the incalculable loss of life and property. Although with the…
With the effects of global climate change impacting the world, collective efforts are needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The energy sector is the single largest contributor to climate change and many efforts are focused on reducing…
The latest solar atmosphere models include non-LTE corrections and 3D hydrodynamic convection simulations. These models predict a significant reduction in the solar metal abundance, which leads to a serious conflict between helioseismic…
On a planet without atmosphere, sustaining human life is very difficult and dangerous, especially during short sunlit period when low temperature prevails. To counter these environmental stresses, the author offer an innovative artificial…
The ion-sputtering (IS) process is active in many planetary environments in the Solar System where plasma precipitates directly on the surface (for instance, Mercury, Moon, Europa). In particular, solar-wind sputtering is one of the most…
To meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement and reduce its dependency on energy imports, the pace, and scale of renewable energy deployment across Europe must increase dramatically over the next decade. Such a steep change in the…
The feasibility and cost-effectiveness of continued growth in solar photovoltaics are closely tied to siting decisions. But trade-offs between costs and technical potential between land categories, especially brownfields and rooftop sites,…
The recently discovered exoplanet Gl581d is extremely close to the outer edge of its system's habitable zone, which has led to much speculation on its possible climate. We have performed a range of simulations to assess whether, given…
Debate continues on the amount and distribution of radioactive heat producing elements (i.e., U, Th, and K) in the Earth, with estimates for mantle heat production varying by an order of magnitude. Constraints on the bulk-silicate Earth's…
The Starshot lightsail project aims to build an ultralight spacecraft ("nanocraft") that can reach Proxima Centauri b in approximately 20 years, requiring propulsion with a relativistic velocity of ~60 000 km/s. The spacecraft's…
Precise and reliable climate projections are required for climate adaptation and mitigation, but Earth system models still exhibit great uncertainties. Several approaches have been developed to reduce the spread of climate projections and…
Launching a starshade to rendezvous with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope would provide the first opportunity to directly image the habitable zones of nearby sunlike stars in the coming decade. A report on the science and feasibility…
Kilometer-scale Earth system models are essential for capturing local climate change. However, these models are computationally expensive and produce petabyte-scale outputs, which limits their utility for applications such as probabilistic…
We have studied the science rationale, goals and requirements for a mission aimed at using the gravitational lensing from the Sun as a way of achieving high angular resolution and high signal amplification. We find that such a mission…