Related papers: Do we have enough air?
When it comes to conversations about funding, the questions of whether the United States should be spending its resources on space-based research often rears its head. Opponents of the idea tend to share the opinion that the resources would…
With the use of the appropriate technology, such as photovoltaics and seawater desalination, humans have the ability to sustainably increase their production of food and energy while minimising detrimental impacts on the Earth system.
While technology and trade have made modern food systems increasingly resilient to disruptions, it is unknown if human society could survive the most extreme threats to agriculture, such as from severe climate change or nuclear/biological…
It is not yet entirely clear whether Mars began as a warm and wet planet that evolved towards the present-day cold and dry body or if it always was cold and dry with just some sporadic episodes of liquid water on its surface. An important…
Current laboratory bounds imply that protons are extremely long-lived. However, this conclusion may not hold for all time and in all of space. We find that the proton lifetime can be $\sim 15$ orders of magnitude shorter in the relatively…
Terrestrial-like exoplanets may obtain atmospheres from three primary sources: Capture of nebular gases, degassing during accretion, and degassing from subsequent tectonic activity. Here we model degassing during accretion to estimate the…
Is life most likely to emerge at the present cosmic time near a star like the Sun? We consider the habitability of the Universe throughout cosmic history, and conservatively restrict our attention to the context of "life as we know it" and…
Available JWST observations TRAPPIST-1 system have suggested that several of the planets are likely airless, or possess a very tenuous atmosphere. However, the high atmospheric escape rates expected for these planets suggest that any…
Waste heat production represents an inevitable consequence of energy conversion as per the laws of thermodynamics. Based on this fact, by using simple theoretical models, we analyze constraints on the habitability of Earth-like terrestrial…
The general circulation of the atmosphere determines the long-term variability of weather processes. This circulation is driven by the temperature differences between the poles and the equator, causing air to move along the Earth's surface.…
Environmental research aimed at monitoring and predicting O2 depletion is still lacking or in need of improvement, in spite of many attempts to find a relation between atmospheric gas content and climate variability. The aim of the present…
Liquid water is one of the most important materials affecting the climate and habitability of a terrestrial planet. Liquid water vaporizes entirely when planets receive insolation above a certain value, which is called the runaway…
Mars provides a critical analog to once habitable exoplanets that have since lost their surface liquid water. The current atmospheric state of Mars retains the chemical fingerprints of that transition, including isotopic signatures of…
By obtaining the assumption that planetary dust particles can escape from the gravitational attraction of a planet, we consider the possibility for the dust grains to leave the star's system by means of the radiation pressure. By taking the…
A modification of the classical primitive equations of the atmosphere is considered in order to take into account important phase transition phenomena due to air saturation and condensation. We provide a mathematical formulation of the…
In a recent study (Garrett, 2011), I described theoretical arguments and empirical evidence showing how civilization evolution might be considered from a purely physical basis. One implication is that civilization exhibits the property of…
Modeling foraging via basic models is a problem that has been recently investigated from several points of view. However, understanding the effect of the spatial distribution of food on the lifetime of a forager has not been achieved yet.…
The mean world climate has warmed since the 19th Century as the anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases has increased the atmospheric opacity to thermal infrared radiation. Has this warming increased the frequency or severity of…
A new expression to the total age of the Universe is derived in terms of the average deceleration parameter. This kinematic result holds regardless of the curvature of the universe as well as of the underlying gravity theory. It remains…
Carbon is an essential element for life but its behavior during Earth's accretion is not well understood. Carbonaceous grains in meteoritic and cometary materials suggest that irreversible sublimation, and not condensation, governs carbon…