Related papers: Abrupt global events in the Earth's history: a phy…
After describing all the contradictions associated with the current Plate Tectonics theory, this paper proposes a model where a single cause can explain all geophysical and geological phenomena. The source of the Earth's activity lies in…
Globally disruptive events include asteroid/comet impacts, large igneous provinces and glaciations, all of which have been considered as contributors to mass extinctions. Understanding the overall relationship between the timings of the…
Geomagnetic field reversals remain as one of the most intriguing problems in geophysics and are regarded as chaotic processes resulting from a dynamo mechanism. In this article, we use the polarity scale data set for the last 170 Myr from…
The record of reversals of the geomagnetic field has played an integral role in the development of plate tectonic theory. Statistical analyses of the reversal record are aimed at detailing patterns and linking those patterns to core-mantle…
We have explored the temporal variability of the seismicity at global scale over the last 124 years, as well as its potential drivers. To achieve this, we constructed and analyzed an averaged global seismicity curve for earthquakes of…
Despite tremendous interest in the topic and decades of research, the origins of the major losses of biodiversity in the history of life on Earth remain elusive. A variety of possible causes for these mass-extinction events have been…
This thesis assesses the influence of astronomical phenomena on the Earth's biosphere and climate. I examine in particular the relevance of both the path of the Sun through the Galaxy and the evolution of the Earth's orbital parameters in…
Mass extinction is a phenomenon in the history of life on Earth when a considerable number of species go extinct over a relatively short period of time. The magnitude of extinction varies between the events, the most well known are the…
The decryption of the temporal sequence of volcanic eruptions is a key step in better anticipating future events. Volcanic activity is the result of a complex interaction between internal and external processes, with time scales spanning…
We report a calculation of time-dependent quasi-geostrophic core flows for 1940-2010. Inverting recursively for an ensemble of solutions, we evaluate the main source of uncertainties, namely the model errors arising from interactions…
Nearby gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are likely to have represented a significant threat to life on the Earth. Recent observations suggest that a significant source of such bursts is compact binary mergers in globular clusters. This link between…
Recent observations suggest that many planetary-mass objects may be present in the outer solar system between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. Gravitational perturbations may occasionally bring them into the inner solar system. Their…
The origin of earthquake has long been recognized as resulting from strike-slip instability of plate tectonics along the fault lines. Several events of earthquake around the globe have happened which cannot be explained by this theory. In…
I find evidence for clustering in age of well-dated impact craters over the last 500 Myr. At least nine impact episodes are identified, with durations whose upper limits are set by the dating accuracy of the craters. Their amplitudes and…
A semiconductor model of rocks is shown to describe unipolar magnetic pulses, a phenomenon that has been observed prior to earthquakes. These pulses are observable because their extremely long wavelength allows them to pass through the…
The magnetopause marks the outer edge of the Earth's magnetosphere and a distinct boundary between solar wind and magnetospheric plasma populations. In this letter, we use global magnetohydrodynamic simulations to examine the response of…
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between several giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities would…
The astronomical theory of Milankovitch relates the changes of Earth' past climate to variations in insolation caused by oscillations of the orbital parameters. However, this theory has problems to account for some major observed phenomena…
Fast changes of Earth's magnetic field could be explained by inviscid and diffusion-less quasi-geostrophic (QG) Magneto-Coriolis modes. We present a hybrid QG model with columnar flows and three-dimensional magnetic fields and find modes…
The average geomagnetic activity during sunspot minimum has been continuously decreasing in the last four cycles. The geomagnetic activity is caused by both interplanetary disturbances - coronal mass ejections and high speed solar wind…