Related papers: Worlds beyond our own
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 search for extraterrestrial intelligence by looking for signals from advanced technological civilizations has been ongoing for some decades. We suggest that it could possibly be made more efficient by focusing on stars from which the…
We review the observations of extrasolar planets, ongoing developments in theories of planet formation, orbital migration, and the evolution of multiplanet systems.
Two decades ago, empirical evidence concerning the existence and frequency of planets around stars, other than our own, was absent. Since this time, the detection of extrasolar planets from Jupiter-sized to most recently Earth-sized worlds…
With thousands of exoplanets now identified, the characterization of habitable planets and the potential identification of inhabited ones is a major challenge for the coming decades. We review the current working definition of habitable…
As the number of detected extrasolar planets increases, exoplanet databases become a valuable resource, confirming some details about planetary formation, but also challenging our theories with new unexpected properties.
Exoplanets are now being discovered in profusion. However, to understand their character requires spectral models and data. These elements of remote sensing can yield temperatures, compositions, and even weather patterns, but only if…
The basic geometry of the Solar System -- the shapes, spacings, and orientations of the planetary orbits -- has long been a subject of fascination as well as inspiration for planet formation theories. For exoplanetary systems, those same…
Characterizing atmospheres beyond the Solar System is an endeavor no longer confined to the realm of science fiction.
In the last 15 years, since the discovery of the first low-mass planets beyond the solar system, there has been tremendous progress in understanding the diversity of (super-)Earth and sub-Neptune exoplanets. Especially the influence of the…
The varied surfaces and atmospheres of planets make them interesting places to live, explore, and study from afar. Unfortunately, the great distance to exoplanets makes it impossible to resolve their disk with current or near-term…
A habitable exoplanet is a world that can maintain stable liquid water on its surface. Techniques and approaches to characterizing such worlds are essential, as performing a census of Earth-like planets that may or may not have life will…
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…
With the start of the Gaia era, the time has come to address the major challenge of deriving the star formation history and evolution of the disk of our MilkyWay. Here we review our present knowledge of the outer regions of the Milky Way…
The study of extrasolar planets has rapidly expanded to encompass the search for new planets, measurements of sizes and masses, models of planetary interiors, planetary demographics and occurrence frequencies, the characterization of…
The search of life in the Universe is a fundamental problem of astrobiology and a major priority for NASA. A key area of major progress since the NASA Astrobiology Strategy 2015 (NAS15) has been a shift from the exoplanet discovery phase to…
The field of exoplanetary science has emerged over the past two decades, rising up alongside traditional solar system planetary science. Both fields focus on understanding the processes which form and sculpt planets through time, yet there…
The discovery of the first extra-solar planet surrounding a main-sequence star was announced in 1995, based on very precise radial velocity (Doppler) measurements. A total of 34 such planets were known by the end of March 2000, and their…
The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfils an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants…
Thousands of planets beyond our solar system have been discovered to date, dozens of which are rocky in composition and are orbiting within the circumstellar habitable zone of their host star. The next frontier in life detection beyond our…