Related papers: Exoplanet Biosignatures: Future Directions
The detection of life on rocky exoplanets in the habitable zones of nearby stars would be a paradigm-shifting advance, and it is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our time. There is no single spectral feature that is an…
The intuition suggested by the Drake equation implies that technology should be less prevalent than biology in the galaxy. However, it has been appreciated for decades in the SETI community that technosignatures could be more abundant,…
The search for signatures of life beyond Earth has been a major goal of space research and astrobiology for decades. The combination of expanded knowledge on Solar System bodies from past missions and advancements in in-situ detection…
This whitepaper discusses the diversity of exoplanets that could be detected by future observations, so that comparative exoplanetology can be performed in the upcoming era of large space-based flagship missions. The primary focus will be…
Future telescopes will survey temperate, terrestrial exoplanets to estimate the frequency of habitable ($\eta_{\text{Hab}}$) or inhabited ($\eta_{\text{Life}}$) planets. This study aims to determine the minimum number of planets ($N$)…
Solar system exploration provides numerous possibilities for advancing technosignature science. The search for life in the solar system includes missions designed to search for evidence of biosignatures on other planetary bodies, but many…
Cosmos has always sparked human curiosity to unveil and speculate its fascinating secrets. This curiosity has ultimately opened a window to other worlds. After years of observation, computation, and data analysis, scientists have revealed…
The search for extraterrestrial (alien) life is one of the greatest scientific quests yet raises fundamental questions about just what we should be looking for and how. We approach alien hunting from the perspective of an experimenter…
Rigorously quantifying the information in high contrast imaging data is important for informing follow-up strategies to confirm the substellar nature of a point source, constraining theoretical models of planet-disk interactions, and…
The astrobiology is an interdisciplinary science, combining the methods and the means of physics, biology, chemistry and astronomy. Its main purpose is to find out if the exoplanets are habitable and if so, to confirm life on them. The…
Recent discoveries of potentially habitable exoplanets have ignited the prospect of spectroscopic investigations of exoplanet surfaces and atmospheres for signs of life. This chapter provides an overview of potential surface and temporal…
The search for exoplanetary life must encompass the complex geological processes reflected in an exoplanet's atmosphere, or we risk reporting false positive and false negative detections. To do this, we must nurture the nascent discipline…
The Astro2020 report outlines numerous recommendations that could significantly advance technosignature science. Technosignatures refer to any observable manifestations of extraterrestrial technology, and the search for technosignatures is…
Can information theory provide insights into whether exoplanets are habitable? Here we apply information theory to a range of simulated exoplanet transmission spectra as a diagnostic tool to search for potential signatures of life on…
The exploration and study of exoplanets remain at the frontier of astronomical research, challenging scientists to continuously innovate and refine methodologies to navigate the vast, complex data these celestial bodies produce. This…
Since its inception six decades ago, astrobiology has diversified immensely to encompass several scientific questions including the origin and evolution of Terran life, the organic chemical composition of extraterrestrial objects, and the…
Advancing the scientific frontier in the search for life in the universe requires support of searches for both biosignatures and technosignatures. A modest budgetary increment can expand the search for life in the universe from primitive to…
The search for life on planets outside our solar system has largely been the province of the astrophysics community until recently. A major development since the NASA Astrobiology Strategy 2015 document (AS15) has been the integration of…
The discovery of exoplanets has both focused and expanded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The consideration of Earth as an exoplanet, the knowledge of the orbital parameters of individual exoplanets, and our new understanding…
The first opportunity to detect indications for life outside the Solar System may be provided already within the next decade with upcoming missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the European Extremely Large Telescope…