Related papers: The Venus Hypothesis
The recent candidate detection of ~1 ppb of phosphine in the middle atmosphere of Venus is so unexpected that it requires an exhaustive search for explanations of its origin. Phosphorus-containing species have not been modelled for Venus'…
Life arose on Earth sometime in the first few hundred million years after the young planet had cooled to the point that it could support water-based organisms on its surface. The early emergence of life on Earth has been taken as evidence…
Ongoing and future space missions aim to identify potentially habitable planets in our Solar System and beyond. Planetary habitability is determined not only by a planet's current stellar insolation and atmospheric properties, but also by…
Despite great advances in our understanding of the formation of the Solar System, the evolution of the Earth, and the chemical basis for life, we are not much closer than the ancient Greeks to an answer of whether life has arisen and…
The discovery of phosphine in Venus' atmosphere provides lessons for the search for life. The detection has survived all challenges and has acquired independent support from archival data from PVP. The presence of phosphine in Venus'…
An ancient Venusian rock could constrain that planet's history, and reveal the past existence of oceans. Such samples may persist on the Moon, which lacks an atmosphere and significant geological activity. We demonstrate that if Venus'…
With the discovery of hundreds of exoplanets and a potentially huge number of Earth-like planets waiting to be discovered, the conditions for their habitability have become a focal point in exoplanetary research. The classical picture of…
Arid terrestrial exoplanets are potentially abundant and are thus interesting targets in the search for life. In particular, M-dwarf planets such as those in the TRAPPIST-1 system may possess limited surface water, whereas early solar…
Venus is 95% the size of Earth and probably has a similar composition and internal energy, but the geodynamical mechanism governing its internal thermal evolution remains controversial. Much of the planet surface (77%) is covered by…
Most stars end their main-sequence (MS) lives by evolving through the red-giant and asymptotic-giant branches before ending as a quiescent, stable white dwarf. Therefore, it is imperative to model the post-MS as it relates to long-term…
The atmosphere of a transiting planet shields the stellar radiation providing us with a powerful method to estimate its size and density. In particular, because of their high ionization energy, atoms with high atomic number (Z) absorb…
Ground based observers have on 5/6th June 2012 the last opportunity of the century to watch the passage of Venus across the solar disk from Earth. Venus transits have traditionally provided unique insight into the Venus atmosphere through…
Whereas the Solar System has Mars and Europa as the best candidates for finding fossil/extant life as we know it - based on complex carbon compounds and liquid water - the 263 (non-pulsar) planetary systems around other stars as known at 15…
Our understanding of planetary nebulae has been significantly enhanced as a result of several recent large surveys (Parker et al., these proceedings). These new discoveries suggest that the `PN phenomenon' is in fact more heterogeneous than…
The universe is found to have undergone several phases in which the gravitational constant had different behaviors. During some epochs the energy density of the universe remained constant and the universe remained static. In the radiation…
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…
Earth is the only planet known to harbor life and, as a result, the search for habitable and inhabited planets beyond the Solar System commonly focuses on analogs to our planet. However, Earth's atmosphere and surface environment have…
On 14th September 2020, the Royal Astronomical Society made an official statement coupled with a webminar on the discovery of phosphine on Venus. Single-line millimetre-waveband spectral detections of phosphine (with a signal-to-noise ratio…
Mars, Venus and Earth are expected to have started in a hot molten state. Here, we discuss how these three terrestrial planets diverged in their evolution and what mechanisms could be the cause. We discuss that early-on after magma ocean…
The planetary mass and radius sensitivity of exoplanet discovery capabilities has reached into the terrestrial regime. The focus of such investigations is to search within the Habitable Zone where a modern Earth-like atmosphere may be a…