Related papers: Optimal Target Stars in the Search for Life
The quest for life in the Universe is often affected by the free use of extrapolations of our phenomenological geocentric knowledge. We point out that the existence of a living organism, and a population of organisms, requires the existence…
Applications of the theory of optimal design of experiments to radial velocity planet search surveys are considered. Different optimality criteria are discussed, basing on the Fisher, Shannon, and Kullback-Leibler informations. Algorithms…
The probability that an exoplanet transits its host star is high for planets in close orbits, but drops off rapidly for increasing semimajor axes. This makes transit surveys for planets with large semimajor axes orbiting bright stars…
The number of potentially habitable planets continues to increase, but we lack the time and resources to characterize all of them. With $\sim$30 known potentially habitable planets and an ever-growing number of candidate and confirmed…
Radial velocity surveys suggest that the Solar System may be unusual and that Jupiter-like planets have a frequency <20% around solar-type stars. However, they may be much more common in one of the closest associations in the solar…
High-precision astrometry at the sub-microarcsecond level opens up a window to study Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars, and to determine their masses. It thus promises to play an important role in exoplanet science…
The majority of discovered exoplanets have been observed orbiting field stars as opposed to within a star cluster. To determine whether the lack of observed exoplanets in star clusters is due to gravitational perturbations or observational…
The HWO Target Stars and Systems 2025 (TSS25) list is a community-developed catalog of potential stellar targets for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) in its survey to directly image Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone. The TSS25…
Determining the orbital eccentricity of an extrasolar planet is critically important for understanding the system's dynamical environment and history. However, eccentricity is often poorly determined or entirely mischaracterized due to poor…
Of the roughly 3000 neutron stars known, only a handful have sub-stellar companions. The most famous of these are the low-mass planets around the millisecond pulsar B1257+12. New evidence indicates that observational biases could still hide…
There is growing evidence that brown dwarfs may be comparable to main-sequence stars in terms of their abundance. In this paper, we explore the prospects for the existence of life on Earth-like planets around brown dwarfs. We consider the…
Massive stars are inherently extreme objects, in terms of radiation, mass loss, rotation, and sometimes also magnetic fields. Concentrating on a (personally biased) subset of processes related to pulsations, rapid rotation and its interplay…
Planetary nebula are useful kinematic tracers of the stars in all galaxy types. I review recent observationally-driven developments in the study of galaxy mass profiles. These have yielded surprising results on spiral galaxy disk masses and…
Observational searches for asteroids orbiting near Earth's triangular Lagrange points face unique obstacles. A population of such asteroids would occupy a large projected area on the sky (possibly hundreds of square degrees) and is not…
Transits of bright stars offer a unique opportunity to study detailed properties of extrasolar planets that cannot be determined through radial-velocity observations. We propose a new technique to find such systems using all-sky…
This paper outlines a simple approach to evaluate habitability of terrestrial planets by assuming different types of planetary atmospheres and using corresponding model calculations. Our approach can be applied for current and future…
The habitable zone (HZ) is the region around a star(s) where standing bodies of water could exist on the surface of a rocky planet. The classical HZ definition makes a number of assumptions common to the Earth, including assuming that the…
Moderately close binaries are a special class of targets for planet searches. From a theoretical standpoint, their hospitality to giant planets is uncertain and debated. From an observational standpoint, many of these systems present…
For more than 60 years, the predominant SETI search paradigm has entailed the observation of stars in an effort to detect alien electromagnetic signals that deliberately target Earth. However, this strategy is fraught with challenges when…
We review how tides may impact the habitability of terrestrial-like planets. If such planets form around low-mass stars, then planets in the circumstellar habitable zone will be close enough to their host stars to experience strong tidal…