Related papers: Constraints on the Early Terrestrial Surface UV En…
Recent findings suggest Mars may have been a clement environment for the emergence of life, and may even have compared favorably to Earth in this regard. These findings have revived interest in the hypothesis that prebiotically important…
Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is common to most planetary environments, and could play a key role in the chemistry of molecules relevant to abiogenesis (prebiotic chemistry). In this work, we explore the impact of UV light on prebiotic…
A key challenge in origin-of-life studies is understanding the environmental conditions on early Earth under which abiogenesis occurred. While some constraints do exist (e.g., zircon evidence for surface liquid water), relatively few…
Ultraviolet (UV) light plays a key role in surficial theories of the origin of life, and numerous studies have focused on constraining the atmospheric transmission of UV radiation on early Earth. However, the UV transmission of the natural…
Potentially-habitable planets orbiting M-dwarfs are of intense astrobiological interest because they are the only rocky worlds accessible to biosignature search over the next 10+ years due to a confluence of observational effects.…
Solar X-ray and UV radiation (0.1-320 nm) received at Earth's surface is an important aspect of the circumstances under which life formed on Earth. The quantity that is received depends on two main variables: the emission of radiation by…
The UV environment of a host star affects the photochemistry in the atmosphere, and ultimately the surface UV environment for terrestrial planets and therefore the conditions for the origin and evolution of life. We model the surface UV…
We use a new interdisciplinary approach to study the UV surface habitability of Proxima $b$ under quiescent and flaring stellar conditions. We assumed planetary atmospheric compositions based on CO$_2$ and N$_2$ and surface pressures from…
Given that the macromolecular building blocks of life were likely produced photochemically in the presence of ultraviolet (UV) light, we identify some general constraints on which stars produce sufficient UV for this photochemistry. We…
Ultraviolet radiation is known to inhibit photosynthesis, induce DNA destruction and cause damage to a wide variety of proteins and lipids. In particular, UV radiation between 200-300 nm becomes energetically very damaging to most of the…
Mid-infrared spectroscopy is one of the few ways to observe the composition of the terrestial planet forming zone, the inner few au, of proto-planetary disks. The species currently detected in the disk atmosphere, for example CO, CO2, H2O…
Chemical and morphological features of spores and pollens have been linked to changes in solar ultraviolet radiation (specifically UVB, 280-315 nm) at Earth's surface. Variation in UVB exposure as inferred from these features has been…
Carbon Dioxide is an important tracer of the chemistry and physics in the terrestrial planet forming zone. Using a thermo-chemical model that has been tested against the mid-infrared water emission we re-interpret the CO2 emission as…
The closest potentially habitable worlds outside our Solar system orbit a different kind of star than our Sun: smaller red dwarf stars. Such stars can flare frequently, bombarding their planets with biologically damaging high-energy UV…
We investigated the potential biological impacts at Earth's surface of stratospheric O3 depletion caused by nearby supernovae known to have occurred about 2.5 and 8 million years ago at about 50 pc distance. New and previously published…
The Lyman alpha line is a robust tracer of high redshift galaxies. We present estimates of Lyman alpha emission from a protogalactic halo illuminated by UV background radiation fields with various intensities. For this purpose, we performed…
The emergence of life on Earth is a highly discussed but still unsolved question. Current research underlines the importance of environments within close proximity to the Earth's surface as they can solve long-standing problems such as…
As photosynthesis on Earth produces the primary signatures of life that can be detected astronomically at the global scale, a strong focus of the search for extrasolar life will be photosynthesis, particularly photosynthesis that has…
The search for potentially habitable exoplanets centers on detecting biosignature molecules in Earth-like atmospheres, which makes it essential to understand their detectability under biologically and geologically influenced conditions. In…
The dozens of rocky exoplanets discovered in the Circumstellar Habitable Zone (CHZ) currently represent the most suitable places to host life as we know it outside the Solar System. However, the presumed presence of liquid water on the CHZ…