Related papers: Ionic Liquid Biospheres
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…
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…
The striking anomalies in physical properties of supercooled water that were discovered in the 1960-70s, remain incompletely understood and so provide both a source of controversy amongst theoreticians, and a stimulus to experimentalists…
Water-worlds are water-rich (>1 wt% H$_2$O) exoplanets. The classical models of water-worlds considered layered structures determined by the phase boundaries of pure water. However, water-worlds are likely to possess comet-like…
At high redshifts, the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) was higher than its value today. We explore the possibility that life may have arisen early because the higher CMB temperature would have supplied the requisite…
Classical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics describe systems in which nothing interacts with nothing. Even the highly refined theory of simple fluids does not deal very well with electrical interactions, boundary conditions, or…
Solid rigidity and liquid-scale mobility are thought incompatible in elemental substances. One cannot have an elemental solid that is long-range positionally ordered wherein the atoms flow like in a liquid simultaneously. The only exception…
In the frame of collective dynamics in water, models built on elementary excitations and long-range electromagnetic interactions in the cell and bulk liquid are presented. Making use of the low effective mass of water coherence domains…
Ionic liquids are widely used as electrolytes in electrochemical devices. In this context, many experimental and theoretical approaches have been recently developed for characterizing their interface with electrodes. In this perspective…
Despite the widespread use of zeolites in chemical industry, their formation process is not fully understood due to the complex and heterogeneous structure of traditional synthesis media. Hydrated silicate ionic liquids (HSILs) have been…
Water is fundamental to our understanding of the evolution of planetary systems and the delivery of volatiles to the surfaces of potentially habitable planets. Yet, we currently have essentially no facilities capable of observing this key…
Silver iodide is one of the most potent inorganic ice nucleating particles known, a feature generally attributed to the excellent lattice match between its basal Ag-(0001) and I-(000-1) surfaces, and ice. This crystal termination, however,…
Surface liquid water is essential for standard planetary habitability. Calculations of atmospheric circulation on tidally locked planets around M stars suggest that this peculiar orbital configuration lends itself to the trapping of large…
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…
Delivering the full benefits of first principles calculations to battery materials demands the development of accurate and computationally-efficient electronic structure methods that incorporate the effects of the electrolyte environment…
Non-linear behavior in interstellar chemical models has been recognized for 25 years now. Different mechanisms account for the possibility of multiple fixed-points at steady state, characterized by the ionization degree of the gas. Chemical…
Planets with large bodies of water on their surface will have more temperate and stable climates, and such planets are the ideal places for life-as-we-know-it to arise and evolve. A key science case for the Habitable Worlds Observatory…
How life started on Earth is an unsolved mystery. There are various hypotheses for the location ranging from outer space to the seafloor, subseafloor or potentially deeper. Here, we applied extensive ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD)…
Recent experimental results indicate that phosphorus, a single-component system, can have two liquid phases: a high-density liquid (HDL) and a low-density liquid (LDL) phase. A first-order transition between two liquids of different…
Ionic liquids (ILs) feature a tailorable and wide range of structural, chemical and electronic properties that make this class of materials suitable to a broad variety of forefront applications in next-generation electronics. Yet, their…