Related papers: Light and Life: Exotic Photosynthesis in Binary St…
Photosynthetic life requires sufficient photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) to metabolise. On Earth, plant behaviour, physiology and metabolism are sculpted around the night-day cycle by an endogenous biological circadian clock. The…
As photosynthesis on Earth produces the primary signatures of life that can be detected astronomically at the global scale, a strong focus of the search for extrasolar life will be photosynthesis, particularly photosynthesis that has…
Photosynthesis is central to Earth's biosphere and a prime candidate for sustaining complex life on habitable exoplanets, yet a thermodynamically consistent treatment of the work potential of stellar radiation at planetary surfaces is still…
It is investigated how biofriendly is the Milky Way for photosynthetic life. Special attention is dedicated to the role of the photobiological regime in the emergence and evolution of this kind of life in terrestrial planets. Following this…
We review the latest findings on extra-solar planets and their potential to support Earth-like life. Focusing on planets orbiting Red Dwarf (RD) stars, the most abundant stellar type, we show that including RDs as potential host stars could…
Here we discuss the feasibility of photosynthesis on Earth-like rocky planets in close orbit around ultra-cool red dwarf stars. Stars of this type have very limited emission in the \textit{photosynthetically active} region of the spectrum…
With more and more extrasolar planets discovered in and around binary star systems, questions concerning the determination of the classical Habitable Zone arise. Do the radiative and gravitational perturbations of the second star influence…
Standard definitions of habitability assume that life requires the presence of planetary gravity wells to stabilize liquid water and regulate surface temperature. Here the consequences of relaxing this assumption are evaluated. Temperature,…
With more than 260 extrasolar planetary systems discovered to-date, the search for habitable planets has found new grounds. Unlike our solar system, the stars of many of these planets are hosts to eccentric or close-in giant bodies. Several…
Recently, the Kepler Space Telescope has detected several planets in orbit around a close binary star system. These so-called circumbinary planets will experience non-trivial spatial and temporal distributions of radiative flux on their…
With the advent of large-collecting-area instruments, the number of objects that can be reached by optical long-baseline interferometry is steadily increasing. We present here a few results on massive binary stars, showing the interest of…
The circumstellar habitable zone and its various refinements serves as a useful entry point for discussing the potential for a planet to generate and sustain life. But little attention is paid to the quality of available energy in the form…
In this paper we have studied the problem of photovoltaic power generation near selected stars in the solar neighborhood. The nature of the optical radiation from a star will depend on its luminosity,HR classification and spectral…
We have attempted to establish an observational evidence for presence of distant companions which may have acquired and/or absorbed the angular momentum during evolution of multiple systems thus facilitating or enabling formation of contact…
Determining planetary habitability is a complex matter, as the interplay between a planet's physical and atmospheric properties with stellar insolation has to be studied in a self consistent manner. Standardized atmospheric models for…
Observations of exoplanets and protoplanetary disks show that binary stellar systems can host planets in stable orbits. Given the high binary fraction among stars, the contribution of binary systems to Galactic habitability should be…
Given the considerable percentage of stars that are members of binaries or stellar multiples in the Solar neighborhood, it is expected that many of these binaries host planets, possibly even habitable ones. The discovery of a terrestrial…
We demonstrate that microlensing can be used for detecting planets in binary stellar systems. This is possible because in the geometry of planetary binary systems where the planet orbits one of the binary component and the other binary star…
Binary/multiple status can affect stars at all stages of their lifetimes: evolution onto the main sequence, properties on the main sequence, and subsequent evolution. 5 $M_\odot$ stars have provided a wealth of information about the binary…
Explore alien solar systems via local star power using interstellar photovoltaics, tailored for the particular target star for maximum power and low mass. We consider tailored organic thin-film photovoltaics. Key for sensing, sending more…