Related papers: Life in solid ice
We report the discovery of methanogenic archaea that account for abrupt factor 10 increases in methane concentration found by E. Brook at depths of 2954 and 3036 m in the GISP2 (Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2) ice core. The total microbial…
The structural dynamics of ice in the freezing - thawing process has been studied in the context of the concept of two-phase water. It was previously shown that water is a two-phase system consisting of free and bound (liquid crystal)…
The model accepted is one where during the Archean Eon the Earths climate was clement despite the weaker Sun. The observational evidence that supports this concept is: the emergence of life, the existence of evaporitic sediments and the…
We examine ice crystal growth from water vapor at temperatures near the melting point, when surface premelting creates a quasiliquid layer at the solid/vapor interface. Recent ice growth measurements as a function of vapor supersaturation…
Brinicles are self-assembling tubular ice membrane structures, centimeters to meters in length, found beneath sea ice in the polar regions of Earth. We discuss how the properties of brinicles make them of possible importance for chemistry…
A disordered quasi-liquid layer of water is thought to cover the ice surface, but many issues, such as its onset temperature, its thickness, or its actual relation to bulk liquid water have been a matter of unsettled controversy for more…
The response of the living tissue to the effects of strong heating or cooling can cause the blood flow rate to vary by an order of magnitude. A mathematical model for the freezing of living tissue is formulated which takes into account the…
The energy dissipated by a living organism is commonly identified with heat generation. However, as cells exchange metabolites with their environment they also dissipate energy in the form of chemical entropy. How dissipation is distributed…
Ongoing and future space missions aim to identify potentially habitable planets in our Solar System and beyond. Planetary habitability is determined not only by a planet's current stellar insolation and atmospheric properties, but also by…
The impact of the inner structure and thermal history of planets on their observable features, such as luminosity or magnetic field, crucially depends on the poorly known heat and charge transport properties of their internal layers. The…
I consider the kinetics of water freezing and show that, at small sub-zero temperatures, (i) the time of ice nucleation within the bulk water environment is enormous and therefore cannot take place either in lakes of in living cells; (ii)…
Ice-rich planets are formed exterior to the water ice-line and thus are expected to contain a substantial amount of ices. The high ice content leads to unique conditions in the interior, under which the structure of a planet is affected by…
With climate modeling predicting a raise of at least 2 C by year 2100, the fate of ice has become a serious concern, but we still do not understand how ice grows (or melts). In the atmosphere, crystal growth rates of basal and prismatic…
Close to the triple point, the surface of ice is covered by a thin liquid layer (so-called quasi-liquid layer) which crucially impacts growth and melting rates. Experimental probes cannot observe the growth processes below this layer, and…
The thermodynamic structure of protoplanetary discs is determined by dust opacities, which depend on the size of the dust grains and their chemical composition. In the inner regions, the grain sizes are regulated by the level of turbulence…
Microbes require several complex organic molecules for growth. A species may obtain a required factor by taking up molecules released by other species or by synthesizing the molecule. The patterns of uptake and synthesis set a flow of…
Heterogeneous ice growth exhibits a maximum in freezing rate arising from the competition between kinetics and the thermodynamic driving force between the solid and liquid states. Here, we use molecular dynamics simulations to elucidate the…
The growth, form, and division of prebiotic vesicles, membraneous bags of fluid of varying components and shapes is hypothesized to have served as the substrate for the origin of life. The dynamics of these out-of-equilibrium structures is…
During the Noachian, Mars' crust may have provided a favorable environment for microbial life. The porous brine-saturated regolith would have created a physical space sheltered from UV and cosmic radiations and provided a solvent, while the…
Marine microorganisms often reach high swimming speeds, either to take advantage of evanescent nutrient patches or to beat Brownian forces. Since this implies that a sizable part of their energetic budget must be allocated to motion, it is…