Here, the state of our knowledge regarding the interior dynamics and evolution of habitable terrestrial planets including Earth and super-Earths is reviewed, and illustrated using state-of-the-art numerical models. Convection of the rocky mantle is the key process that drives the evolution of the interior: it causes plate tectonics, controls heat loss from the metallic core (which generates the...

[1] The discovery of terrestrial-scale extrasolar planets, and their calculated abundance in the galaxy, has prompted speculation on their surface conditions and thermal structure. Both are dependent on the tectonic regime of a planet, which is itself a function of the balance between driving forces, and the resistive strength of the lithosphere. Here we use mantle convection simulations to sho...

The resistivities of various liquid rare earths were calculated in a single-site t-matrix approximation. Good agreement with experiment is achieved. Spin disorder scattering is shown to be unimportant in the liquid state. The experimental resistivity data of liquid rare earths (RE) shows the following behavior [l, 21 : The resistivity p increases across the series of the trivalent RE's. The tem...

We compare two recent astrobiological approaches to the solution of the problem of the “Great Silence” (or Fermi’s paradox): the “rare Earth” hypothesis of Ward and Brownlee, and the phase-transition scenario of Annis. We show that they have important similarities, as far as self-selection of intelligent observers is concerned. In order to better illuminate the differences, we consider the dura...