Related papers: Dynamical and biological panspermia constraints wi…
In support of the Astrobiology Science Strategy, this whitepaper outlines some key technology challenges pertaining to the remote search for life in exoplanetary systems. Finding evidence for life on rocky planets outside of our solar…
The Solar System hosts the most studied and best understood major and minor planetary bodies - and the only extraterrestrial bodies to have been visited by spacecraft. The Solar System therefore provides important constraints on both the…
Observations of the population of cold Jupiter planets ($r>$1 AU) show that nearly all of these planets orbit their host star on eccentric orbits. For planets up to a few Jupiter masses, eccentric orbits are thought to be the outcome of…
The population of exoplanetary systems detected by Kepler provides opportunities to refine our understanding of planet formation. Unraveling the conditions needed to produce the observed exoplanets will sallow us to make informed…
The goal of planet formation as a field of study is not only to provide the understanding of how planets come into existence. It is also an interdisciplinary bridge which links astronomy to geology and mineralogy. Recent observations of…
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…
Exoplanets are typically thought to form in protoplanetary disks left over from protostellar disk of their newly formed host star. However, additional planetary formation and evolution routes may exist in old evolved binary systems. Here we…
We investigate whether it is possible that viable microbes could have been transported to Earth from the planets in extra-solar systems by means of natural vehicles such as ejecta expelled by comet or asteroid impacts on such planets. The…
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…
Thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets have been identified in recent years. Consequently, theoretical research on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems has seen a boost, and the processes of planet-planet…
Standard definitions of habitability assume that life requires the presence of planetary gravity wells to stabilize liquid water and regulate surface temperature. Here the consequences of relaxing this assumption are evaluated. Temperature,…
Understanding the formation and dynamical evolution of habitable planets in extrasolar planetary systems is a challenging task. In this respect, systems with multiple giant planets and/or multiple stars present special complications. The…
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…
The Panspermia hypothesis posits that either life's building blocks (molecular Panspermia) or life itself (organism-based Panspermia) may have been interplanetary transferred to facilitate the Origins of Life (OoL) on a given planet,…
This paper explores the stability of an Earth-like planet orbiting a solar mass star in the presence of an outer-lying intermediate mass companion. The overall goal is to estimate the fraction of binary systems that allow Earth-like planets…
A wealth of Earth-sized exoplanets will be discovered in the coming years, proving a large pool of candidates from which the targets for the search for life beyond the Solar system will be chosen. The target selection process will require…
Over the past several decades, thousands of planets have been discovered outside of our Solar System. These planets exhibit enormous diversity, and their large numbers provide a statistical opportunity to place our Solar System within the…
We present an approach that is able to both rapidly assess the dynamical stability of multiple planet systems, and determine whether an exoplanet system would be capable of hosting a dynamically stable Earth-mass companion in its habitable…
Observations in the past decade have revealed extrasolar planets with a wide range of orbital semimajor axes and eccentricities. Based on the present understanding of planet formation via core accretion and oligarchic growth, we expect that…
The transfer of circumstellar disk mass and momentum onto the protostar and out into the environment occurs via a variety of mechanisms including magnetospheric accretion, jets, outflows, and disk winds. The interplay of these processes…