Related papers: The Habitable Zone and Extreme Planetary Orbits
Our understanding of the processes that are relevant to the formation and maintenance of habitable planetary systems is advancing at a rapid pace, both from observation and theory. The present review focuses on recent research that bears on…
Understanding the set of conditions that allow rocky planets to have liquid water on their surface -- in the form of lakes, seas or oceans -- is a major scientific step to determine the fraction of planets potentially suitable for the…
Hycean planets -- exoplanets with substantial water ice layers, deep surface oceans, and hydrogen-rich atmospheres -- are thought to be favorable environments for life. Due to a relative paucity of atmospheric greenhouse gases, hycean…
A planet's history dictates its current potential to host habitable conditions and life. The concept of the Continuously Habitable Zone (CHZ) has been used to define the region around a star most likely to host planets with long-term…
Understanding the concept of habitability is related to an evolutionary knowledge of the particular planet-in-question. Additional indications so-called "systemic aspects" of the planetary system as a whole governs a particular planet's…
Future space missions, TPF and Darwin will focus on searches of signatures of life on extrasolar planets. In this paper we look for model independ definition of the habitable zone. It will be shown that the radius of the habitable sphere…
The habitable zone is the region around a star where standing bodies of liquid water can be stable on a planetary surface. Its width is often assumed to be dictated by the efficiency of the carbonate-silicate cycle, which has maintained…
Studying exoplanet atmospheres is essential for assessing their potential to host liquid water and their capacity to support life (their habitability). Each atmosphere uniquely influences the likelihood of surface liquid water, defining the…
The habitable fraction of a planet's surface is important for the detectability of surface biosignatures. The extent and distribution of habitable areas is influenced by external parameters that control the planet's climate, atmospheric…
The circumstellar liquid-water habitable zone guides our search for potentially inhabited exoplanets, but remains observationally untested. We show that the inner edge of the habitable zone can now be mapped among exoplanets using their…
Exoplanet detection in the past decade by efforts including NASA's Kepler and TESS missions has discovered many worlds that differ substantially from planets in our own Solar System, including more than 150 exoplanets orbiting binary or…
The investigation of exoplanetary habitability is integral to advancing our knowledge of extraterrestrial life potential and detailing the environmental conditions of distant worlds. In this analysis, we explore the properties of exoplanets…
The relative abundances of exotic environments provides us with (uninformed) bounds on the habitability of those environments relative to our own, on the basis that our presence here is not too atypical. For instance, since red stars…
The concept of Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ) was introduced a few years ago as an extension of the much older concept of Circumstellar Habitable Zone. However, the physical processes underlying the former concept are hard to identify and…
Conventional definitions of habitability require abundant liquid surface water to exist continuously over geologic timescales. Water in each of its thermodynamic phases interacts with solar and thermal radiation and is the cause for strong…
The galactic habitable zone is defined as the region with sufficient abundance of heavy elements to form planetary systems in which Earth-like planets could be born and might be capable of sustaining life, after surviving to close supernova…
Traditional definitions of the habitable zone assume that habitable planets contain a carbonate-silicate cycle that regulates CO2 between the atmosphere, surface, and the interior. Such theories have been used to cast doubt on the…
Once a star leaves the main sequence and becomes a red giant, its Habitable Zone (HZ) moves outward, promoting detectable habitable conditions at larger orbital distances. We use a one-dimensional radiative-convective climate and stellar…
The ongoing discoveries of extrasolar planets are unveiling a wide range of terrestrial mass (size) planets around their host stars. In this letter, we present estimates of habitable zones (HZs) around stars with stellar effective…
Earth has a unique surface character among Solar System worlds. Not only does it harbor liquid water, but also large continents. An exoplanet with a similar appearance would remind us of home, but it is not obvious whether such a planet is…