Emergence of a Habitable Planet

We address the first several hundred million years of Earth’s history. The Moon-forming impact left Earth enveloped in a hot silicate atmosphere that cooled and condensed over ∼1,000 yrs. As it cooled the Earth degassed its volatiles into the atmosphere. It took another ∼2 Myrs for the magma ocean to freeze at the surface. The cooling rate was determined by atmospheric thermal blanketing. Tidal heating by the new Moon was a major energy source to the magma ocean. After the mantle solidified geothermal heat became climatologically insignificant, which allowed the steam atmosphere to condense, and left behind a ∼100 bar, ∼500 K CO₂ atmosphere. Thereafter cooling was governed by how quickly CO₂ was removed from the atmosphere. If subduction were efficient this could have taken as little as 10 million years. In this case the faint young Sun suggests that a lifeless Earth should have been cold and its oceans white with ice. But if carbonate subduction were inefficient the CO₂ would have mostly stayed in the atmosphere, which would have kept the surface near ∼500 K for many tens of millions of years. Hydrous minerals are harder to subduct than carbonates and there is a good chance that the Hadean mantle was dry. Hadean heat flow was locally high enough to ensure that any ice cover would have been thin (<5 m) in places. Moreover hundreds or thousands of asteroid impacts would have been big enough to melt the ice triggering brief impact summers. We suggest that plate tectonics as it works now was inadequate to handle typical Hadean heat flows of 0.2–0.5 W/m². In its place we hypothesize a convecting mantle capped by a ∼100 km deep basaltic mush that was relatively permeable to heat flow. Recycling and distillation of hydrous basalts produced granitic rocks very early, which is consistent with preserved >4 Ga detrital zircons. If carbonates in oceanic crust subducted as quickly as they formed, Earth could have been habitable as early as 10–20 Myrs after the Moon-forming impact.     

柏拉图理念论及其在西方认识发展史中的地位

柏拉图理念论作为哲学与神学的交汇点，形式是神学的，所阐述的内容却并非都是消极的。它以特定的方式论述了一般、共相是认识的唯一对象，以极端的方式肯定了主体认识结构在认识中的作用，以颠倒的形式阐述了认识是一个由感性上升到理性的辩证过程。这一学说对认识对象、认识起源以及认识过程所做的深刻揭示，对以后的西方认识发展史产生了深远影响。     

Cometary Deuterium

Deuterium fractionations in cometary ices provide important clues to the origin and evolution of comets. Mass spectrometers aboard spaceprobe Giotto revealed the first accurate D/H ratios in the water of Comet 1P/Halley. Ground-based observations of HDO in Comets C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake) and C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp), the detection of DCN in Comet Hale-Bopp, and upper limits for several other D-bearing molecules complement our limited sample of D/H measurements. On the basis of this data set all Oort cloud comets seem to exhibit a similar ratio in H₂O, enriched by about a factor of two relative to terrestrial water and approximately one order of magnitude relative to the protosolar value. Oort cloud comets, and by inference also classical short-period comets derived from the Kuiper Belt cannot be the only source for the Earth's oceans. The cometary O/C ratio and dynamical reasons make it difficult to defend an early influx of icy planetesimals from the Jupiter zone to the early Earth. D/H measurements of OH groups in phyllosilicate rich meteorites suggest a mixture of cometary water and water adsorbed from the nebula by the rocky grains that formed the bulk of the Earth may be responsible for the terrestrial D/H. The D/H ratio in cometary HCN is 7 times higher than the value in cometary H₂O. Species-dependent D-fractionations occur at low temperatures and low gas densities via ion-molecule or grain-surface reactions and cannot be explained by a pure solar nebula chemistry. It is plausible that cometary volatiles preserved the interstellar D fractionation. The observed D abundances set a lower limit to the formation temperature of (30 ± 10) K. Similar numbers can be derived from the ortho-to-para ratio in cometary water, from the absence of neon in cometary ices and the presence of S₂. Noble gases on Earth and Mars, and the relative abundance of cometary hydrocarbons place the comet formation temperature near 50 K. So far all cometary D/H measurements refer to bulk compositions, and it is conceivable that significant departures from the mean value could occur at the grain-size level. Strong isotope effects as a result of coma chemistry can be excluded for molecules H₂O and HCN. A comparison of the cometary ratio with values found in the atmospheres of the outer planets is consistent with the long-held idea that the gas planets formed around icy cores with a high cometary D/H ratio and subsequently accumulated significant amounts of H₂ from the solar nebula with a low protosolar D/H. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

原点误差对发射方位角及弹道精度的影响分析

发射原点是飞行器试验中非常重要的参数,在某些特殊试验中,发射原点往往是不能准确给出的,为此,本文详细推导了发射原点误差对发射方位角和弹道精度的影响公式。仿真计算结果证明,原点误差对发射方位角影响较大,而原点误差和发射方位角误差的共同作用对发射系下的弹道精度影响很大,对于此类高精度的飞行器试验必须考虑原点误差对弹道精度的影响。     

Strategy to search fragments from breakups in GEO

This paper proposes a strategy to search fragments from breakups in the Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) region based upon population prediction and motion prediction by means of ground-based optical observations. Breakup fragments have uncertainties in the states such as their position and motion, or even in their existence. Population prediction and motion prediction resolve those uncertainties. Population prediction evaluates the time-averaged distribution of fragments, whose position at a given time is unknown, in the celestial sphere. Motion prediction evaluates the expected motion of fragments appeared in image series acquired by a telescope’s CCD camera. This paper logically describes procedures of the search strategy, and provides mathematical expressions of population prediction and motion prediction. This paper also validates the search strategy via actual observations, in which a confirmed breakup in the GEO region is selected as a target. It is concluded that the proposed strategy is valid even for searching uncataloged fragments from breakups in the GEO region.     

The Geology and Habitability of Terrestrial Planets: Fundamental Requirements for Life

The current approach to the study of the origin of life and to the search for life elsewhere is based on two assumptions. First, life is a purely physical phenomenon closely linked to specific environmental conditions. From this, we hypothesise that when these environmental conditions are met, life will arise and evolve. If these assumptions are valid, the search for life elsewhere should be a matter of mapping what we know about the range of environments in which life can exist, and then simply trying to find these environments elsewhere. Second, life can be clearly distinguished from the non-living world. While a single feature of a living organism left in the rock record is not always sufficient to determine unequivocally whether life was present, life often leaves multiple structural, mineralogical and chemical biomarkers that, in sum, support a conclusion that life was present. Our understanding of the habitats that can sustain or have sustained life has grown tremendously with the characterisation of extremophiles. In this chapter, we highlight the range of environments that are known to harbour life on Earth, describe the environments that existed during the period of time when life originated on Earth, and compare these habitats to the suitable environments that are found elsewhere in our solar system, where life could have arisen and evolved.     

Cosmic-ray composition and its relation to shock acceleration by supernova remnants

An overview is given on the present status of the understanding of the origin of galactic cosmic rays. Recent measurements of charged cosmic rays and photons are reviewed. Their impact on the contemporary knowledge about the sources and acceleration mechanisms of cosmic rays and their propagation through the Galaxy is discussed. Possible reasons for the knee in the energy spectrum and scenarios for the end of the galactic cosmic-ray component are described.     

Conversations on the Habitability of Worlds: The Importance of Volatiles

Our scientific forefathers discuss the interrelationships between water, climate, the atmosphere, and life on Earth and other terrestrial planets at a workshop in Nichtchatel, Switzerland.     

Observation campaign dedicated to 1968-081E fragments identification

This paper proposes a comprehensive approach to associate origins of space objects newly discovered during optical surveys in the geostationary region with spacecraft breakup events. A recent study has shown that twelve breakup events would be occurred in the geostationary region. The proposed approach utilizes orbital debris modeling techniques to effectively conduct prediction, detection, and classification of breakup fragments. Two techniques are applied to get probable results for origin identifications. First, we select an observation point where a high detection rate for one breakup event among others can be expected. Second, we associate detected tracklets, which denotes the signals associated with a physical object, with the prediction results according to their angular velocities. The second technique investigates which breakup event a tracklet would belong to, and its probability by using the k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) algorithm.     

浅析中英姓名文化的共同点

姓名文化是人类文化特殊而又重要的组成部分。通过分别探究中英两种语言中姓氏的起源、姓名选择的条件、意义以及中英两种姓名模块所呈现的内在特点，挖掘了姓名这一语言现象所蕴涵的政治和历史等时代信息．发现了存在于东西方姓名文化中的巨大相同点。使东西方文化研究的璀璨星空更加闪烁。