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The origin of life is often framed primarily as a chemical problem, yet life's defining feature is evolution. Advances in geochemistry, prebiotic chemistry, and molecular biology have produced diverse scenarios for the emergence of genomes,…
For more than 3.5 billion years, life experienced dramatic environmental extremes on Earth. These include shifts from oxygen-less to over-oxygenated atmospheres and cycling between hothouse conditions and global glaciations. Meanwhile, an…
The last two decades have seen the number of known exoplanets increase from a small handful to nearly 2000 known exoplanets, thousands more planet candidates, and several upcoming missions that are expected to further increase the…
Exoplanets, or planets outside our own solar system, have long been of interest to astronomers; however, only in the past two decades have scientists had the technology to characterize and study planets so far away from us. With advanced…
In no other field of astrophysics has the impact of new instrumentation been as substantial as in the domain of exoplanets. Before 1995 our knowledge about exoplanets was mainly based on philosophical and theoretical considerations. The…
As we prepare for the next planetary mission charged with finding life beyond Earth, the Astrobiology community must continue to improve its understanding of what constitutes a biosignature, through the use of planetary analog samples. The…
For centuries, astronomers have discussed the possibility of inhabited worlds - from Herschel's 18th-century observations suggesting Mars may host life, to the systematic search for technosignatures that began in the 1960s using radio…
The existence of intelligent, interstellar traveling and colonising life is a key assumption behind the Fermi Paradox. Until recently, detecting signs of life elsewhere has been so technically challenging as to seem almost impossible.…
While astrophysical and cosmological probes provide a remarkably precise and consistent picture of the quantity and general properties of dark matter, its fundamental nature remains one of the most significant open questions in physics.…
Cosmos has always sparked human curiosity to unveil and speculate its fascinating secrets. This curiosity has ultimately opened a window to other worlds. After years of observation, computation, and data analysis, scientists have revealed…
The existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life forms among the thousands of billions of galaxies that dance in the Universe is beyond doubt. Meeting with one of them is only a matter of time. SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial…
The origin of life and the origin of the universe are among the most important problems of science and they might be inextricably linked. Hydro-gravitational-dynamics (HGD) cosmology predicts hydrogen-helium gas planets in clumps as the…
This article reviews the emerging field of exo-geoscience, focusing on the geological and geophysical processes thought to influence the evolution and (eu)habitability of rocky exoplanets. We examine the possible roles of planetary…
Astrobiology is the field of science devoted to searching for life elsewhere in the Universe. It is inherently interdisciplinary, integrating results from multiple fields of science, and in this respect has strong synergies with 'big…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to telescopically constrain the frequency and abundance of biospheres in the solar neighborhood. Origin-of-life theories vary in their predictions for the environmental requirements and the…
The discovery of a biosphere on another planet would transform how we view ourselves, and our planet Earth, in relation to the rest of the cosmos. We now know Earth is one planet among eight circling our sun; our sun is part of a swirling…
Our ability to explore the cosmos by direct contact has been limited to a small number of lunar and interplanetary missions. However, the NASA Starlight program points a path forward to send small, relativistic spacecraft far outside our…
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 search for life elsewhere in the universe is a pivotal question in modern science. However, to address whether life is common in the universe we must first understand the likelihood of abiogenesis by studying the origin of life on…
The Venus Life Finder Missions are a series of focused astrobiology mission concepts to search for habitability, signs of life, and life itself in the Venus atmosphere. While people have speculated on life in the Venus clouds for decades,…