Related papers: Galactic Effects on Habitability
A habitable zone of a star is defined as a range of orbits within which a rocky planet can support liquid water on its surface. The most intriguing question driving the search for habitable planets is whether they host life. But is the age…
A rigorous definition of the habitable zone and its dependence on planetary properties is part of the search for habitable exoplanets. In this work, we use the general circulation model ExoCAM to determine how the inner edge of the…
We specify the range to which perturbations penetrate a planetesimal system. Such perturbations can originate from massive planets or from encounters with other stars. The latter can have an origin in the star cluster in which the planetary…
Photoevaporation driven by the ultraviolet radiation from massive stars severely limits the lifetime of protoplanetary discs around stars formed within stellar clusters. I investigate the resulting influence of clustered environments on the…
In a multiverse context, determining the probability of being in our particular universe depends on estimating its overall habitability compared to other universes with different values of the fundamental constants. One of the most…
We present a model of the Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ), described in terms of the spatial and temporal dimensions of the Galaxy that may favour the development of complex life. The Milky Way galaxy is modelled using a computational…
In order to study the influence of the environment on the stellar population of early-type galaxies we have analyzed the relations between the density of the environment (lrho) and the residuals to the Mg2-sigma relation, R_a, and between…
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…
Simulations of the effects of stellar fly-bys on planetary systems in star-forming regions show a strong dependence on subtle variations in the initial spatial and kinematic substructure of the regions. For similar stellar densities, the…
The formation of massive stars is one of the major unsolved problems in stellar astrophysics. However, only few if any of these are found as single stars, on average massive stars have more than one companion. Many of them are born in dense…
No matter how fascinating and exotic other terrestrial planets are revealed to be, nothing generates more excitement than announcements regarding their habitability. From the observation of Mars to present-day efforts toward Venus and the…
In a multiverse setting, we expect to be situated in a universe that is exceptionally good at producing life. Though the conditions for what life needs to arise and thrive are currently unknown, many will be tested in the coming decades.…
As stellar compositions evolve over time in the Milky Way, so will the resulting planet populations. In order to place planet formation in the context of Galactic chemical evolution, we make use of a large ($N = 5\,325$) stellar sample…
The environment is known to affect the formation and evolution of galaxies considerably best visible through the well-known morphology-density relationship. In this paper we study the effect of environment on the evolution of early-type…
Galaxy properties are known to be affected by their environment. This is well established for the extremes of the density scales, between the high-density cluster environment and the low-density field. It is however not fully understood how…
Counted among the most powerful cosmic events, supernovae (SNe) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can be highly disruptive for life: Their radiation can be harmful for biota or induce extinction by removing most of the protective atmospheric…
The majority of stars form in star clusters and many are thought to have planetary companions. We demonstrate that multi-planet systems are prone to instabilities as a result of frequent stellar encounters in these star clusters much more…
We combine constraints on galaxy formation histories with planet formation models, yielding the Earth-like and giant planet formation histories of the Milky Way and the Universe as a whole. In the Hubble Volume (10^13 Mpc^3), we expect…
Most stars and thus most planetary systems do not form in isolation. The larger star-forming environment affects protoplanetary disks in multiple ways: gravitational interactions with other stars truncate disks and alter the architectures…
The majority of binary star systems that host exoplanets will spend the first portion of their lives within a star-forming cluster that may drive dynamical evolution of the binary-planet system. We perform numerical simulations of S-type…