Related papers: On the probability of habitable planets

Several groups have recently suggested that small planets orbiting very closely around white dwarf stars could be promising locations for life to arise, even after stellar death. There are still many uncertainties, however, regarding the…

The dynamic nature of life's ability to thrive in diverse and changing planetary environments suggests that habitability and survival depend on the evolutionary path and life adaptation to environmental conditions. Here we explore such…

Stable, hydrogen-burning, M dwarf stars comprise about 75% of all stars in the Galaxy. They are extremely long-lived and because they are much smaller in mass than the Sun (between 0.5 and 0.08 MSun), their temperature and stellar…

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…

There are four different stable climate states for pure water atmospheres, as might exist on so-called "waterworlds". I map these as a function of solar constant for planets ranging in size from Mars size to 10 Earth-mass. The states are:…

Many observed giant planets lie on eccentric orbits. Such orbits could be the result of strong scatterings with other giant planets. The same dynamical instability that produces these scatterings may also cause habitable planets in interior…

Should we expect most habitable planets to share the Earth's marbled appearance? For a planetary surface to boast extensive areas of both land and water, a delicate balance must be struck between the volume of water it retains and the…

Understanding planetary habitability is one of the major challenges of the current scientific era, particularly given the discovery of a large and diverse terrestrial exoplanet population. Discerning the primary factors that contribute to…

Stellar activity and planetary atmospheric properties have the potential to strongly influence habitability. To date, neither have been adequately studied in the multiverse context, so there has been no assessment of how these effects…

Conventionally, a habitable planet is one that can support liquid water on its surface. Habitability depends on temperature, which is set by insolation and the greenhouse effect, due mainly to CO2 and water vapor. The CO2 level is increased…

We combine a semi-analytic model of galaxy evolution with constraints on circumstellar habitable zones and the distribution of terrestrial planets to probe the suitability of galaxies of different mass and type to host habitable planets,…

The habitable zone (HZ) around a star is typically defined as the region where a rocky planet can maintain liquid water on its surface. That definition is appropriate, because this allows for the possibility that carbon-based,…

The recent detection of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, Trappist-1 and many other nearby M-type stars has led to speculations, whether liquid water and life actually exist on these planets. To a large extent,…

The quest for atmospheric spectral signatures that may witness biological activity in exoplanets is focused on rocky planets. The best targets for future, challenging spectroscopic observations will be selected among potentially habitable…

The search for life beyond the solar system is a central goal in exoplanetary science. Exoplanet surveys are increasingly detecting potentially habitable exoplanets and large telescopes in space and on ground are aiming to detect possible…

The potential habitability of a terrestrial planet is usually defined by the possible existence of liquid water on its surface. The potential presence of liquid water depends on many factors such as, most importantly, surface temperatures.…

Planets with large bodies of water on their surface will have more temperate and stable climates, and such planets are the ideal places for life-as-we-know-it to arise and evolve. A key science case for the Habitable Worlds Observatory…

From life on other planets to virtual classrooms this thesis spans a wide array of research topics all based on how we see other worlds. Our understanding of everything from moon phases, the planets in our Solar System, and exoplanet…

Planetary surface habitability has so far been considered, in the main, upon a global scale. The increasing number of 3D modelling studies of (exo)planetary climate has highlighted the need for a more nuanced understanding of surface…

Water and land surfaces on a planet interact with gases in the atmosphere and with radiation from the star. These interactions define the environments that prevail on the planet, some of which may be more amenable to prebiotic chemistry,…