Related papers: Habitability properties of circumbinary planets
Terrestrial planets in temperate orbits around very low mass stars are likely to have evolved in a very different way than solar system planets, and in particular Earth. However, because these are the first planets that are and will be…
Previous attempts to describe circumbinary habitable zones have been concerned with the spatial extent of the zone, calculated analytically according to the combined radiation field of both stars. By contrast to these "spatial HZs", we…
The notion of a Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ), or regions of the Milky Way galaxy that preferentially maintain the conditions to sustain complex life, has recently gained attention due to the detection of numerous exoplanets and advances…
Hitherto, six P-type planets are found around five binary systems, i.e. Kepler-16 b, 34 b, 35 b, 38 b, 47 b, c, which are all Neptune or Jupiter-like planets. The stability of planets and the habitable zones are influenced by the…
The dominant mechanism for generating free-floating planets has so far remained elusive. One suggested mechanism is that planets are ejected from planetary systems due to planet-planet interactions. However, instability around a single star…
Circumbinary planets (CBPs) currently identified are in nearly coplanar configurations relative to their host binaries, yet the dynamical origin of this preference remains unclear. We investigate this question by simulating the secular…
A comprehensive approach is provided to the study of both S-type and P-type habitability in stellar binary systems, which in principle can also be expanded to systems of higher order. P-type orbits occur when the planet orbits both binary…
Context. Astrobiological evolution of the Milky Way (or the shape of its "astrobiological landscape") has emerged as one of the key research topics in recent years. In order to build precise, quantitative models of the Galactic…
Planetary obliquity is a first order control on planetary climate and seasonal contrast, which has a number of cascading consequences for life. How moderately high obliquity (obliquities greater than Earth's current obliquity up to…
Recent radial velocity observations have indicated that Jovian-type planets can exist in moderately close binary star systems. Numerical simulations of the dynamical stability of terrestrial-class planets in such environments have shown…
As evident from the nearby examples of Proxima Centauri and TRAPPIST-1, Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of low-mass stars are common. Here, we focus on such planetary systems and argue that their (oceanic) tides could be more…
Transiting circumbinary planets discovered by Kepler provide unique insight into binary star and planet formation. Several features of this new found population, for example the apparent pile-up of planets near the innermost stable orbit,…
The Kepler mission has detected a number of transiting circumbinary planets (CBPs). Although currently not detected, exomoons could be orbiting some of these CBPs, and they might be suitable for harboring life. A necessary condition for the…
Stellar members of binary systems are formed from the same material, therefore they should be chemically identical. However, recent high-precision studies have unveiled chemical differences between the two members of binary pairs composed…
We study the prospects for life on planets with subsurface oceans, and find that a wide range of planets can exist in diverse habitats with ice envelopes of moderate thickness. We quantify the energy sources available to these worlds, the…
Many exoplanets are discovered in binary star systems in internal or in circumbinary orbits. Whether the planet can be habitable or not depends on the possibility to maintain liquid water on its surface, and therefore on the luminosity of…
Recently, the Kepler Space Telescope has detected several planets in orbit around a close binary star system. These so-called circumbinary planets will experience non-trivial spatial and temporal distributions of radiative flux on their…
The discovery of many planets using the Kepler telescope includes ten planets orbiting eight binary stars. Three binaries, Kepler-16, Kepler-47, and Kepler-453, have at least one planet in the circumbinary habitable-zone (BHZ). We constrain…
We examine characteristics of circumbinary orbits in the context of current planet formation scenarios. Analytical perturbation theory predicts the existence of nested circumbinary orbits that are generalizations of circular paths around a…
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…