Our modern world needs more and more resources provided by our planet Earth: foods, water, raw materials, ores and energy, either natural (sun, wind, hydraulic, tidal, geothermal, nuclear) or fossil (coal, petroleum, gas). An on-going effort in research and exploration is therefore necessary to discover, exploit and develop them. And, in this effort, it is better to rely on information coming from fundamental research, development of technology and geological studies, than on hazard and luck! Geological studies more and more rely on different sources of information coming from use of new analytical methods and physical sensors such as well logging tools. <...>

Planet Earth is unique in many ways from the other silicate-metal planets in the solar system. In addition to oceans and an atmosphere that contains oxygen, Earth is the only planet that exhibits plate tectonics. Plate tectonics appears to be the result of convective cooling of the mantle, although the gravitational pull of subducted slabs probably drives plate motions (Conrad and Lithgrow-Bertelloni, 2002). Plate tectonics includes sites of plate formation at ocean ridges and sites of recycling into the mantle, which today are at subduction zones. Although geodynamic models support coherent plates throughout Earth history, just when and how plates became negatively buoyant is not yet clear. This is partly due to our uncertainty about the early thermal history of the mantle. Was the mantle hotter than at present, as generally assumed, or was it the same temperature (or even lower) due to enhanced rates of convective cooling during the early Archean? This leads to the question of how we track modern-style plate tectonics back in time. <...>

This work investigates the permissibility and viability of property rights on the celestial bodies, particularly the extraterrestrial aspects of land and mineral resources ownership. In lay terms, it aims to find an answer to the question “Who owns the Moon?”

In 1969, when I was a student in California, there was a rash of predictions from astrologers, clairvoyants, and evangelists that there would be a devastating earthquake and the entire state—or at least a large part of it—would fall into the ocean. The seers claimed this would happen during April, although they were not in agreement about the precise date.