Related papers: In Outer Space without a Space Suit?
The concept of a system-wide measure of the sustainment of life (habitability) for space-faring interplanetary species is introduced and explored. Although largely agnostic to the details of how interplanetary life might operate (e.g., via…
Recent detections of potentially habitable exoplanets around sunlike stars demand increased exploration of the physical conditions that can sustain life, by whatever methods available. Insight into these conditions can be gained by…
There is currently no evidence for life on any known exoplanet. Here, we propose a form of "galactic anthropology" to detect not only the existence of life on transiting exoplanets, but also the existence of environmentalism movements. By…
People with impairments are not able to participate in space missions. However, this is not because they cannot; instead, spacecraft have not been designed for them. Therefore, instead of simply excluding people with impairments, they…
Establishing a human settlement on Mars is an incredibly complex engineering problem. The inhospitable nature of the Martian environment requires any habitat to be largely self-sustaining. Beyond mining a few basic minerals and water, the…
The concept of the Circumstellar Habitable Zone has served the scientific community well for some decades. It slips easily off the tongue, and it would be hard to replace. Recently, however, several workers have postulated types of…
The architecture of a large interstellar spaceship, which is capable of serving as a living environment for a population over many generations, is mainly dictated by the needs of said population in terms of food, water and breathable gases.…
Habitability is usually defined as the requirement for a terrestrial planet's atmosphere to sustain liquid water. This definition can be complemented by the dynamical requirement that other planets in the system do not gravitationally…
High obliquity planets represent potentially extreme limits of terrestrial climate, as they exhibit large seasonality, a reversed annual-mean pole-to-equator gradient of stellar heating, and novel cryospheres. A suite of 3-D global climate…
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…
Thousands of exoplanets orbit nearby stars, showcasing a remarkable diversity in mass, size, and orbits. With the James Webb Space Telescope now operational, we are observing exoplanet atmospheres and aiming to reach down to small,…
On a planet without atmosphere, sustaining human life is very difficult and dangerous, especially during short sunlit period when low temperature prevails. To counter these environmental stresses, the author offer an innovative artificial…
As oxygen is essential for respiration and metabolism for multicellular organisms on Earth, its presence may be crucial for the development of a complex biosphere on other planets. And because life itself, through photosynthesis,…
A general sketch of how the problem of space dimensionality depends on Anthropic arguments is presented. A new argument in favor of a stable scenario for space dimensionality for a time scale longer than that required for the existence of…
Ongoing and future space missions aim to identify potentially habitable planets in our Solar System and beyond. Planetary habitability is determined not only by a planet's current stellar insolation and atmospheric properties, but also by…
We consider super-Earth sized planets which have a water mass fraction that is large enough to form an external mantle composed of high pressure water ice polymorphs and that lack a substantial H/He atmosphere. We consider such planets in…
Habitability of exoplanet's deepest oceans could be limited by the presence of high-pressure ices at their base. New work demonstrates that efficient chemical transport within deep planetary ice mantles is possible through significant salt…
One of the promising methods to search for life on extra-solar planets (exoplanets) is to detect life's signatures in their atmospheres. Spectra of exoplanet atmospheres at the modest resolution needed to search for oxygen, carbon dioxide,…
In this paper it is presented the concept and design of a new type of spacecraft that could be used to make the first manned interstellar travel. Solar one would integrate three near-term technologies, namely: compact nuclear fusion…
Civilization cannot sustain an exponential growth for long time even when neglecting numerous laws of physics! In this paper, we examine what are fundamental obstacles to long term survival of a civilization and its possibility to colonize…