Related papers: The Next Great Exoplanet Hunt
X-ray spectroscopy is key to address the theme of "The Hot Universe", the still poorly understood astrophysical processes driving the cosmological evolution of the baryonic hot gas traceable through its electromagnetic radiation. Two future…
Transmission spectroscopy is an important technique to probe the atmospheres of exoplanets. With the advent of TESS and, in the future, of PLATO, more and more transiting planets around bright stars will be found and the observing time at…
One of the most significant goals of modern science is establishing whether life exists around other suns. The most direct path towards its achievement is the detection and atmospheric characterization of terrestrial exoplanets with…
In this paper we discuss how we can read a planets spectrum to assess its habitability and search for the signatures of a biosphere. After a decade rich in giant exoplanet detections, observation techniques have now reached the ability to…
Over the last two decades, we have intensified our search for a ghost particle, with the hope that it would provide us with information on the darkest places of our Universe. This quest has been conducted from the deep caves of the Earth,…
Our Universe is a vast, tantalizing enigma - a mystery that has aroused humankind's innate curiosity for eons. Begging questions on alien lifeforms have been thus far unfruitful, even with the bounding advancements we have embarked upon in…
This paper discusses compelling science cases for a future long-baseline interferometer operating at millimeter and centimeter wavelengths, like the proposed Next Generation Vary Large Array (ngVLA). We report on the activities of the…
In this study, we use simple performance metrics to assess the science capabilities of future ground-based gravitational-wave detector networks -- composed of A+ or Voyager upgrades to the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA observatories and proposed…
Time-series transit photometry from the Kepler space telescope has allowed for the discovery of thousands of exoplanets. We explore the potential of yet improved future missions such as PLATO 2.0 in detecting solar system analogues. We use…
Exoplanet science promises a continued rapid accumulation of new observations in the near future, energizing a drive to understand and interpret the forthcoming wealth of data to identify signs of life beyond our Solar System. The large…
Over 300 extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been detected orbiting nearby stars. We now hope to conduct a census of all planets around nearby stars and to characterize their atmospheres and surfaces with spectroscopy. Rocky planets within…
The search for particle-like dark matter with meV-to-GeV masses has developed rapidly in the past few years. We summarize the science case for these searches, the recent progress, and the exciting upcoming opportunities. Funding for…
Assess the joint capabilities of emerging telescopes for near-Earth objects (NEOs) survey and characterization, and what they will add to the current capabilities or replace. NASA telescopes in prime mission, in development, or under study,…
The next generation gravitational wave (GW) detectors -- Einstein Telescope (ET) and Cosmic Explorer (CE) will have distance horizons up to $\mathcal{O}(10)$ Gpc for detecting binary neutron star (BNS) mergers. This will make them ideal for…
Exoplanet research has shown an incessant growth since the first claim of a hot giant planet around a solar-like star in the mid-1990s. Today, the new facilities are working to spot the first habitable rocky planets around low-mass stars as…
Future direct imaging missions will primarily observe planets that have been previously detected, mostly via the radial velocity (RV) technique, to characterize planetary atmospheres. In the meantime, direct imaging may discover new planets…
This is the report of the Ultraviolet-Optical Working Group (UVOWG) commissioned by NASA to study the scientific rationale for new missions in ultraviolet/optical space astronomy approximately ten years from now, when the Hubble Space…
The Advanced Technology Large Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) is a set of mission concepts for the next generation UV-Optical-Near Infrared space telescope with an aperture size of 8 to 16 meters. ATLAST, using an internal coronagraph or…
Wide-field optical imaging surveys will contain tens of thousands of new strong gravitational lenses. Some of these will have new and unusual image configurations, and so will enable new applications: for example, systems with high image…
We assume the supersymmetric model for dark matter in the universe and our galaxy, and direct methods to distinguish these kinds of dark matter are described. We then focus on the current and future experiment search for SUSY-WIMPS.…