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Earth-like planets in the circumstellar habitable zone (HZ) may have dramatically different climate outcomes depending on their spin-orbit parameters, altering their habitability for life as we know it. We present a suite of 93 ROCKE-3D…
The proportions of oxygen, carbon and major rock-forming elements (e.g. Mg, Fe, Si) determine a planet's dominant mineralogy. Variation in a planet's mineralogy subsequently affects planetary mantle dynamics as well as any deep water or…
Temperature-dependent biological productivity controls silicate weathering and thereby extends the potential habitable timespan of Earth. Models and theoretical considerations indicate that the runaway greenhouse on Earth-like exoplanets is…
The Alpha Centauri AB system is an attractive one for radial velocity observations to detect potential exoplanets. The high metallicity of both Alpha Centauri A and B suggest that they could have possessed circumstellar discs capable of…
Conventionally, a habitable planet is one that can support liquid water on its surface. Habitability depends on temperature, which is set by insolation and the greenhouse effect, due mainly to CO2 and water vapor. The CO2 level is increased…
When searching for inhabited exoplanets, understanding the boundaries of the habitable zone around the parent star is key. If life can strongly influence its global environment, then we would expect the boundaries of the habitable zone to…
Detection of an atmosphere around a terrestrial exoplanet will be a major milestone in the field, but our observational capacities are biased towards to tidally locked, close-in planets orbiting M-dwarf stars. The atmospheres of these…
Surface liquid water is essential for standard planetary habitability. Calculations of atmospheric circulation on tidally locked planets around M stars suggest that this peculiar orbital configuration lends itself to the trapping of large…
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,…
Habitability is a measure of an environment's potential to support life, and a habitable exoplanet supports liquid water on its surface. However, a planet's success in maintaining liquid water on its surface is the end result of a complex…
Habitable zones are regions around stars where large bodies of liquid water can be sustained on a planet or satellite. As many stars form in binary systems with non-zero eccentricity, the habitable zones around the component stars of the…
Much attention has been given to the climate dynamics and habitable boundaries of synchronously rotating planets around low mass stars. However, other rotational states are possible, particularly when higher eccentricity orbits can be…
Studying exoplanet atmospheres is essential for assessing their potential to host liquid water and their capacity to support life (their habitability). Each atmosphere uniquely influences the likelihood of surface liquid water, defining the…
The concept of a system-wide measure of the sustainment of life (habitability) for space-faring interplanetary species is introduced and explored. Although largely agnostic to the details of how interplanetary life might operate (e.g., via…
Potentially habitable planets can orbit close enough to their host star that the differential gravity across their diameters can fix the rotation rate at a specific frequency, a process called tidal locking. Tidally locked planets on…
We present a large ensemble of simulations of an Earth-like world with increasing insolation and rotation rate. Unlike previous work utilizing idealized aquaplanet configurations we focus our simulations on modern Earth-like topography. The…
Massive stars dominate the radiative and mechanical feedback of young stellar populations, yet their intense ultraviolet fields and strong winds are typically presumed to preclude Earth-like habitability. We quantify this expectation by…
In the past 15 years, astronomers have revealed that a significant fraction of the stars should harbor planets and that it is likely that terrestrial planets are abundant in our galaxy. Among these planets, how many are habitable, i.e.…
JWST has shown that CO2 and CO are common on the surfaces of objects in the Kuiper belt and have apparent surface coverages even higher than that of water ice, though water ice is expected to be significantly more abundant in the bulk…
Carbon is an essential element for a habitable world. Inner (r < 3 au) disk planetary carbon compositions are strongly influenced by supply and survival of carbonaceous solids. Here we trace the journey of carbon from the interstellar…