Related papers: ESA White paper: Atmospheric modeling: Setting Bio…
Spectral retrieval has long been a powerful tool for interpreting planetary remote sensing observations. Flexible, parameterised, agnostic models are coupled with inversion algorithms in order to infer atmospheric properties directly from…
In recent years, numerical models that were developed for Earth have been adapted to study exoplanetary climates to understand how the broad range of possible exoplanetary properties affects their climate state. The recent discovery and…
We review the field of exoplanetary biosignatures with a main focus upon atmospheric gas-phase species. Due to the paucity of data in Earth-like planetary atmospheres a common approach is to extrapolate knowledge from the Solar System and…
A number of transiting, potentially habitable Earth-sized exoplanets have recently been detected around several nearby M dwarf stars. These worlds represent important targets for atmospheric characterization for the upcoming NASA James Webb…
Terrestrial planetary systems may exist around nearby stars as the Earth-sized counterparts to the many giant planets already discovered within the solar neighborhood. In this chapter we first discuss the numerous techniques which have been…
We propose a new parametrization of the impact parameter u0 and impact angle {\alpha} for microlensing systems composed by an Earth-like Exoplanet around a Solar mass Star at 1 AU. We present the caustic topology of such system, as well as…
Observing habitable exoplanets that may resemble Earth is a key priority in astronomy that is dependent on not only detecting such worlds, but also ascertaining that apparent signatures of habitability are not due to other sources. Space…
The current explosion in detection and characterization of thousands of extrasolar planets from the Kepler mission, the Hubble Space Telescope, and large ground-based telescopes opens a new era in searches for Earth-analog exoplanets with…
A variety of terrestrial planets with different physical parameters and exotic atmospheres might plausibly exist outside our Solar System, waiting to be detected by the next generation of space-exploration missions. Some of these planets…
Characterizing the atmospheres of extrasolar planets is the new frontier in exoplanetary science. The last two decades of exoplanet discoveries have revealed that exoplanets are very common and extremely diverse in their orbital and bulk…
Exoplanet atmospheric retrieval is a computational technique widely used to infer properties of planetary atmospheres from remote spectroscopic observations. Retrieval codes typically employ Bayesian sampling algorithms or machine learning…
Earth is the only planet known to harbor life and, as a result, the search for habitable and inhabited planets beyond the Solar System commonly focuses on analogs to our planet. However, Earth's atmosphere and surface environment have…
More than a thousand exoplanets have been discovered over the last decade. Perhaps more excitingly, probing their atmospheres has become possible. With current data we have glimpsed the diversity of exoplanet atmospheres that will be…
Inferring the climate and surface conditions of terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zone is a major goal for the field of exoplanet science. This pursuit will require both statistical analyses of the population of habitable planets as…
How can scientists conclude with high confidence that an exoplanet hosts life? As telescopes come on line over the next 20 years that can directly observe photons from terrestrial exoplanets, this question will dictate the activities of…
The search for life on exoplanets is motivated by the universal ways in which life could modify its planetary environment. Atmospheric gases such as oxygen and methane are promising candidates for such environmental modification due to the…
The discovery of Earth-like planets is a major focus of current planetology research and faces a significant technological challenge. Indeed, when it comes to detecting planets as small and cold as the Earth, the cost of observation time is…
Before about 500 million years ago, most probably our planet experienced temporary snowball conditions, with continental and sea ices covering a large fraction of its surface. This points to a potential bistability of Earth's climate, that…
Definition of habitability depends on the organisms under consideration. One way to determine habitability of some environment is to compare its certain parameters to environments where extremophilic micro-organisms thrive on Earth. We can…
The search for life on exoplanets is one of the grand scientific challenges of our time. The strategy to date has been to find (e.g., through transit surveys like Kepler) Earth-like exoplanets in their stars habitable zone, then use…