Related papers: Habitable zone predictions and how to test them
It may be possible to detect biosignatures of photosynthesis in an exoplanet's atmosphere. However, such a detection would likely require a dedicated study, occupying a large amount of telescope time. It is therefore prudent, while…
The inner edge of the classical habitable zone is often defined by the critical flux needed to trigger the runaway greenhouse instability. This 1D notion of a critical flux, however, may not be so relevant for inhomogeneously irradiated…
Stable, hydrogen-burning, M dwarf stars comprise about 75% of all stars in the Galaxy. They are extremely long-lived and because they are much smaller in mass than the Sun (between 0.5 and 0.08 MSun), their temperature and stellar…
An analysis of the currently known exoplanets in the habitable zones (HZs) of their host stars is of interest in both the wake of the NASA Kepler mission and with prospects for expanding the known planet population through future ground-…
Understanding the limits of rocky planet habitability is one of the key goals of current and future exoplanet characterization efforts. An intrinsic concept of rocky planet habitability is the Habitable Zone. To date, the most widely used…
Stellar activity and planetary atmospheric properties have the potential to strongly influence habitability. To date, neither have been adequately studied in the multiverse context, so there has been no assessment of how these effects…
We investigate the possibility of finding Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of 34 nearby FGK-dwarfs, each known to host one giant planet exterior to their habitable zone detected by RV. First we simulate the dynamics of the planetary…
Understanding planetary habitability requires a comparative approach that explores the divergent evolutionary outcomes of Earth and Venus. The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be uniquely positioned to conduct a statistical and…
With continued improvement in telescope sensitivity and observational techniques, the search for rocky planets in stellar habitable zones is entering an exciting era. With so many exoplanetary systems available for follow-up observations to…
Determining habitable zones in binary star systems can be a challenging task due to the combination of perturbed planetary orbits and varying stellar irradiation conditions. The concept of "dynamically informed habitable zones" allows us,…
Definition of habitability depends on the organisms under consideration. One way to determine habitability of some environment is to compare its certain parameters to environments where extremophilic micro-organisms thrive on Earth. We can…
Given the considerable percentage of stars that are members of binaries or stellar multiples in the Solar neighborhood, it is expected that many of these binaries host planets, possibly even habitable ones. The discovery of a terrestrial…
Understanding when global glaciations occur on Earth-like planets is a major challenge in climate evolution research. Most models of how greenhouse gases like CO2 evolve with time on terrestrial planets are deterministic, but the complex,…
Recent radial velocity observations have indicated that Jovian-type planets can exist in moderately close binary star systems. Numerical simulations of the dynamical stability of terrestrial-class planets in such environments have shown…
With improvements in exoplanet detection techniques, the number of multiple planet systems discovered is increasing, while the detection of potentially habitable Earth-mass planets remains complicated and thus requires new search…
In the past decade, observations from space and ground have found H$_2$O to be the most abundant molecular species, after hydrogen, in the atmospheres of hot, gaseous, extrasolar planets. Being the main molecular carrier of oxygen, H$_2$O…
Habitable planets are commonly imagined to be temperate planets like Earth, with areas of open ocean and warm land. In contrast, planets in snowball states, where oceans are entirely ice-covered, are believed to be inhospitable. However, we…
There are four different stable climate states for pure water atmospheres, as might exist on so-called "waterworlds". I map these as a function of solar constant for planets ranging in size from Mars size to 10 Earth-mass. The states are:…
We investigate how rapid stellar rotation commonly seen in A/F stars can influence planet habitability. Specifically, we model how rapid rotation influences a planet's irradiation and determine the location of the habitable zone for stars…
We have computed the Galactic Habitable Zones (GHZs) of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) based on the probability of terrestrial planet formation, which depends on the metallicity (Z) of the interstellar medium, and the number of formed stars per…