Related papers: Photosynthesis on Exoplanets and Exomoons from Ref…
Photosynthesis is central to Earth's biosphere and a prime candidate for sustaining complex life on habitable exoplanets, yet a thermodynamically consistent treatment of the work potential of stellar radiation at planetary surfaces is still…
We show that planets around M-dwarfs with $M_\star \lesssim 0.2 M_\odot$ may not receive enough photons in the photosynthetically active range of $400$-$750$ nm to sustain Earth-like biospheres. As a result of the lower biological…
Oxygenic photosynthesis is the most important biochemical process in Earth biosphere and likely very common on other habitable terrestrial planets, given the general availability of its input chemical ingredients and of light as source of…
Photosynthesis is a plausible pathway for the sustenance of a substantial biosphere on an exoplanet. In fact, it is also anticipated to create distinctive biosignatures detectable by next-generation telescopes. In this work, we explore the…
Characterizing habitable exoplanets and/or their moons is of paramount importance. Here we show the results of our magnetic field topological modeling which demonstrate that terrestrial exoplanet-exomoon coupled magnetospheres work together…
Many exoplanets have been found in orbits close to their host stars and thus they are subject to the effects of photo-evaporation. Previous studies have shown that a large portion of exoplanets detected by the Kepler mission have been…
With most planets and planetary candidates detected in the stellar habitable zone (HZ) being super-Earths and gas giants, rather than Earth-like planets, we naturally wonder if their moons could be habitable. The first detection of such an…
Recent studies have shown that large exomoons can form in the accretion disks around super-Jovian extrasolar planets. These planets are abundant at about 1 AU from Sun-like stars, which makes their putative moons interesting for studies of…
In a few years, space telescopes will investigate our Galaxy to detect evidence of life, mainly by observing rocky planets. In the last decade, the observation of exoplanet atmospheres and the theoretical works on biosignature gasses have…
The detection of moons orbiting extrasolar planets ("exomoons") has now become feasible. Once they are discovered in the circumstellar habitable zone, questions about their habitability will emerge. Exomoons are likely to be tidally locked…
Introduction: The search for life on distant exoplanets is expected to rely on atmospheric biosignatures detection, such as oxygen of biological origin. However, it is not demonstrated how much oxygenic photosynthesis, which on Earth…
The circumstellar habitable zone and its various refinements serves as a useful entry point for discussing the potential for a planet to generate and sustain life. But little attention is paid to the quality of available energy in the form…
Giant planets in the habitable zone may host exomoons with conditions conducive to life. In this paper we describe a method by which the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) could detect such moons: broadband reflected-light lunar eclipses…
On the Earth, photosynthetic organisms are responsible for the production of virtually all of the oxygen in the atmosphere. On the land, vegetation reflects in the visible, leading to a red edge that developed about 450 Myr ago and has been…
One of the possible signs of life on distant habitable exoplanets is the red-edge, which is a rise in the reflectivity of planets between visible and near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. Previous studies suggested the possibility that the…
We review the latest findings on extra-solar planets and their potential to support Earth-like life. Focusing on planets orbiting Red Dwarf (RD) stars, the most abundant stellar type, we show that including RDs as potential host stars could…
Of the few thousand discovered exoplanets, a significant number orbit in the habitable zone of their star. Many of them are gas giants lacking a rocky surface and solid water reservoirs necessary for life as we know it. The search for…
We explore the feasibility and potential characteristics of photosynthetic light-harvesting on exo-planets orbiting in the habitable zone of low mass stars ($< 1$ M$_{\odot}$). As stellar temperature, $T_{s}$, decreases, the irradiance…
Here we discuss the feasibility of photosynthesis on Earth-like rocky planets in close orbit around ultra-cool red dwarf stars. Stars of this type have very limited emission in the \textit{photosynthetically active} region of the spectrum…
One of the unique aspects of Earth is that it has a fractionally large Moon, which is thought to have formed from a Moon-forming disk generated by a giant impact. The Moon stabilizes the Earth's spin axis at least by several degrees and…