Filtering by Subject: Planetary Sciences
Published: 2023-09-15
Subjects: Planetary Sciences
The process of impact crater formation can fundamentally change the nature of target materials, creating products that can be observed from planetary-scale geophysics all the way down to mineral microstructure. Impact-generated shock waves can vaporise, melt, and permanently deform the materials they pass through. Large quantities of the target are damaged and displaced, ejecting material outside [...]
Published: 2023-07-28
Subjects: Planetary Sciences
Escalating climate impacts predicted in the past decades are now a reality almost everywhere on the planet, and the time-critical dimension of the climate crisis means that the coming years will be instrumental in securing a climate resilient future for generations to come. Education is central to promoting climate action, yet the role that climate change education plays in advancing climate [...]
Published: 2023-07-11
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geology, Planetary Sciences
The Arabian shield of Saudi Arabia likely has many impact craters due to the old age of its rocks, however many of them have not yet been discovered due to their resemblance to plutons. Using satellite imagery, a 12-km wide circular structure with a central peak was identified at As Sail Al Kabeer, 40 kilometers north of the city of Taif in western Saudi Arabia. Fieldwork has shown that this [...]
Published: 2023-04-26
Subjects: Planetary Geochemistry, Planetary Sciences
Our knowledge of the evolution of the solar system relies upon our ability to interpret a limited set of observations, including geochemical data from returned samples and meteorites, remotely sensed data from spacecraft and telescopes, and information measured in situ via landers and rovers. Our ability to obtain these data is constantly improving in quality and quantity, but the understanding [...]
Published: 2023-04-14
Subjects: Biology, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Life Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Systems Biology
The modern world uses predictive computer models for many important purposes, including weather predictions, epidemic management, flood forecasting and warnings, and economic policymaking. We need to know how much we can trust the projections of these models, not only to achieve more accurate projections for systems, but also to undertake scientific learning about systems by incrementally testing [...]
Published: 2023-04-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Mineral Physics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences
We examine magnesium and potassium solubility in liquid Fe mixtures, representative of Earth’s core composition, in equilibrium with liquid silicate mixtures representative of an early magma ocean. Our study is based on the calculation of the chemical potentials of MgO and K2O in both phases, using density functional theory. For MgO, we also study stability against precipitation of the solid [...]
Published: 2023-03-31
Subjects: Cosmochemistry, Other Planetary Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geology, Planetary Sciences
Pallasite meteorites contain evidence for vastly different cooling timescales: rapid cooling at high temperatures (K/yrs) and slow cooling at lower temperatures (K/Myrs). Pallasite olivine also shows contrasting textures ranging from well-rounded to angular and fragmental, and some samples record chemical zoning. Previous pallasite formation models have required fortuitous changes to the parent [...]
Published: 2023-02-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Sciences
Template matching has become a cornerstone technique of observational seismology. By taking known events, and scanning them against a continuous record, new events smaller than the signal-to-noise ratio can be found, substantially improving the magnitude of completeness of earthquake catalogues. Template matching is normally used in an array setting, however as we move into the era of planetary [...]
Published: 2023-01-28
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Astrophysics and Astronomy, Planetary Sciences
Lonar lake is a hypervelocity impact crater formed in a basaltic terrain of Deccan Traps in the state of Maharashtra, India. The crater has an approximate radius of 915 m and an average depth of about 137 m. Here we report the results of our numerical investigations aimed to elucidate the physical characteristics of incoming asteroid. For realistic simulation, we not only consider [...]
Published: 2022-12-19
Subjects: Planetary Sciences
In 2019 while launching a multidisciplinary research project aimed at developing the Puna de Atacama region as a natural laboratory, investigators within the University of Atacama (Chile) conducted a bibliographic search identifying previously studied geographical points of the region and of potential interest for planetary science and astrobiology research. This preliminary work highlighted a [...]
Published: 2022-11-30
Subjects: Other Planetary Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Sciences
Byrne & Krishnamoorthy (2022) estimated the frequency of volcanic eruptions on Venus by scaling the eruption frequency obtained from a database containing Earth data. In reproducing their study, I found that the estimated number of new and ongoing volcanic eruptions on Venus in a given year is approximately 42, instead of the previously reported 120 eruptions. This updated estimate of Byrne & [...]
Published: 2022-11-20
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology, Planetary Sciences
Earth’s geosphere and biosphere have coevolved over time, influencing each other’s stability and keeping our planet habitable for most of its 4.543 billion years of history. Biogeochemical cycles play a key role in controlling this interaction, connecting long-term geological cycles and the much faster evolution of the Earth’s outer biologically dominated envelopes. A small set of [...]
Published: 2022-10-18
Subjects: Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Non-linear Dynamics, Planetary Sciences, Statistical Models
We present the Energy Balance Model – Kalman Filter (EBM-KF), a hybrid model of the global mean surface temperature (GMST) and ocean heat content anomaly (OHCA). It combines an energy balance model with parameters drawn from the literature and a statistical Extended Kalman Filter assimilating observed and/or earth system model-simulated GMST and OHCA. Our motivation is to create an efficient and [...]
Published: 2022-09-15
Subjects: Planetary Sciences
Data-driven models for water body extraction have experienced accelerated growth in recent years, thanks to advances in processing techniques and computational resources, as well as improved data availability. In this study, we modified the standard U-Net, a convolutional neural network (CNN) method, to extract water bodies from scenes captured from Sentinel-1 satellites of selected areas during [...]
Published: 2022-04-21
Subjects: Planetary Geology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Hydrology, Planetary Sciences, Planetary Sedimentology
Ice and other mineral cements in Mars’ shallow subsurface affect the mechanical properties of the shallow crust, the geologic processes that shape the planet’s surface, and the search for past or extant Martian life. Cements increase seismic velocities. We use rock physics models to infer cement properties from seismic velocities. Model results confirm that the upper 300 m of Mars beneath InSight [...]