相关论文: Evolutionary Catastrophes and the Goldilocks Probl…
Since time immemorial life has been viewed as being fragile, yet over the past few decades it has been found that many extreme environments are inhabited by organisms known as extremophiles.Knowledge of their emergence, adaptability, and…
The Fermi paradox is the conflict between an expectation of a high {\em ex ante} probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the apparently lifeless universe we in fact observe. The expectation that the universe should be…
Artificial broadcasts from extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) are a hypothetical class of celestial phenomena. Unlike known astrophysical objects, the societies that generate them may be able to replicate on galactic scales through…
The eccentricity evolution of multiple planet systems can provide valuable constraints on planet formation models. Unfortunately, the inevitable uncertainties in the current orbital elements can lead to significant ambiguities in the nature…
The field of exoplanetary science is making rapid progress both in statistical studies of exoplanet properties as well as in individual characterization. As space missions provide an emerging picture of formation and evolution of…
Epidemic disease spreading is conventionally often modelled and analyzed by means of rate and diffusion equations, following the paradigms of well-controlled chemical reactions and diffusive dynamics in a test tube. Yet, serious worries…
Whether or not biodiversity dynamics tend toward stable equilibria remains an unsolved question in ecology and evolution with important implications for our understanding of diversity and its conservation. Phylo/population genetic models…
This study examines the hypothesis that the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), culminating in the emergence of Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), could act as a "Great Filter" that is responsible for the scarcity of…
Large differences between the properties of the known sample of cataclysmic variable stars (CVs) and the predictions of the theory of binary star evolution have long been recognised. However, because all existing CV samples suffer from…
Numerous Earth-destroying doomsday scenarios have recently been analyzed, including breakdown of a metastable vacuum state and planetary destruction triggered by a "strangelet'' or microscopic black hole. We point out that many previous…
Earthquakes occur because of abrupt slips on faults due to accumulated stress in the Earth's crust. Because most of these faults and their mechanisms are not readily apparent, deterministic earthquake prediction is difficult. For effective…
When a large number of similar entities interact among each other and with their environment at a low scale, unexpected outcomes at higher spatio-temporal scales might spontaneously arise. This nontrivial phenomenon, known as emergence,…
Habitability is a measure of an environment's potential to support life, and a habitable exoplanet supports liquid water on its surface. However, a planet's success in maintaining liquid water on its surface is the end result of a complex…
Uncertainty, characterised by randomness and stochasticity, is ubiquitous in applications of evolutionary game theory across various fields, including biology, economics and social sciences. The uncertainty may arise from various sources…
Life on Earth has experienced numerous upheavals over its approximately 4 billion year history. In previous work we have discussed how interruptions to stability lead, on average, to increases in habitability over time, a tendency we called…
Where is everybody? This phrase distills the foreboding of what has come to be known as the Fermi Paradox - the disquieting idea that, if extraterrestrial life is probable in the Universe, then why have we not encountered it? This conundrum…
Over the past two decades, enormous advances in the detection of exoplanets have taken place. Currently, we have discovered hundreds of earth-sized planets, several of them within the habitable zone of their star. In the coming years, the…
The potential habitability of an exoplanet is traditionally assessed by determining if its orbit falls within the circumstellar `habitable zone' of its star, defined as the distance at which water could be liquid on the surface of a planet…
Terrestrial planets in temperate orbits around very low mass stars are likely to have evolved in a very different way than solar system planets, and in particular Earth. However, because these are the first planets that are and will be…
Approximately two-thirds of the Earth, the only known inhabited planet, is covered in ocean. Why not 0.01% or 99.99%? It has been previously suggested that this may represent a certain degree of fine-tuning, and thus perhaps observers are…