Related papers: Geoscience and the Search for Life Beyond the Sola…
The search for habitable exoplanets inspires the question - how do habitable planets form? Planet habitability models traditionally focus on abiotic processes and neglect a biotic response to changing conditions on an inhabited planet. The…
Direct observations of exoplanets probe the demographics and atmospheric composition of young self-luminous companions, yielding insight into their formation and early evolution history. In the near future, Gaia will reveal hundreds of…
The current explosion in detection and characterization of thousands of extrasolar planets from the Kepler mission, the Hubble Space Telescope, and large ground-based telescopes opens a new era in searches for Earth-analog exoplanets with…
The field of exoplanet atmospheric characterization has recently made considerable advances with the advent of high-resolution spectroscopy from large ground-based telescopes and the commissioning of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).…
One of the most exciting scientific challenges is to detect Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of other stars in the galaxy and search for evidence of life. The ability to observe and characterise dozens of potentially Earth-like…
The search for extrasolar planets in the past decades has shown that planets abound in the Solar neighborhood. While we are still missing an Earth twin, the forthcoming space missions and ground-based instrumentation are already driven to…
Future remote sensing of exoplanets will be enhanced by a thorough investigation of our solar system Ice Giants (Neptune-size planets). What can the configuration of the magnetic field tell us (remotely) about the interior, and what…
As astronomers, we are living an exciting time for what concerns the search for other worlds. Recent discoveries have already deeply impacted our vision of planetary formation and architectures. Future bio-signature discoveries will…
Understanding the concept of habitability is related to an evolutionary knowledge of the particular planet-in-question. Additional indications so-called "systemic aspects" of the planetary system as a whole governs a particular planet's…
The search for signs of life through the detection of exoplanet atmosphere biosignature gases is gaining momentum. Yet, only a handful of rocky exoplanet atmospheres are suitable for observation with planned next-generation telescopes. To…
The exoplanet detection is the most exciting and challenging field of astronomy. The discovery of many exoplanets has revolutionized our understanding of the formation and evolution of planetary systems and has showed new ways to search for…
Earth will become uninhabitable within 2-3 Gyr as a result of the moving boundaries of the habitable zone caused by the increasing luminosity of the Sun. Predictions about the future of habitable conditions on Earth include a decline in…
Any search for present or past life beyond Earth should consider the initial processes and related environmental controls that might have led to its start. As on Earth, such an understanding lies well beyond how simple organic molecules…
The aim of my dissertation is to investigate habitability in extra-Solar Systems. Most of the time, only planets are considered as possible places where extraterrestrial life can emerge and evolve, however, their moons could be inhabited,…
The upcoming extremely large telescopes will provide the first opportunity to search for signs of habitability and life on non-transiting terrestrial exoplanets using high-contrast, high-resolution instrumentation. However, the suite of…
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…
Over the past three decades, exoplanet research has delivered an extensive census of planets spanning a wide range of masses, sizes, and orbital configurations. Despite this progress, the physical interpretation of these populations remains…
I review the major open science questions in exoplanet atmospheres. These are mainly focused in the areas of understanding atmospheric physics, the atmosphere as a window into other realms of planetary physics, and the atmosphere is a…
In this study, we treat Earth as an exoplanet and investigate our home planet by means of a potential future mid-infrared (MIR) space mission called the Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE). We combine thermal spectra from an…
Searching for life elsewhere in the universe is one of the most highly prioritized pursuits in astronomy today. However, the ability to observe evidence of Earth-like life through biosignatures is limited by the number of planets in the…