Related papers: Biofluorescent Worlds I: Global Biological Fluores…
Our first targets in the search for signs of life are orbiting nearby M stars, such as the planets in the Proxima Centauri, Ross-128, LHS-1140, and TRAPPIST-1 systems. Future ground-based discoveries, and those from the TESS mission, will…
Thousands of planets beyond our solar system have been discovered to date, dozens of which are rocky in composition and are orbiting within the circumstellar habitable zone of their host star. The next frontier in life detection beyond our…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is the first NASA Astrophysics flagship mission with a key science goal of searching for signs of life on rocky habitable exoplanets beyond our solar system. The Living Worlds Community Working Group…
Recent discoveries of potentially habitable exoplanets have ignited the prospect of spectroscopic investigations of exoplanet surfaces and atmospheres for signs of life. This chapter provides an overview of potential surface and temporal…
Remote sensing of the Earth has demonstrated that photosynthesis is traceable as the vegetation red edge (VRE), which is the steep rise in the reflection spectrum of vegetation, and as solar-induced fluorescence. This study examined the…
Exoplanet hunting efforts have revealed the prevalence of exotic worlds with diverse properties, including Earth-sized bodies, which has fueled our endeavor to search for life beyond the Solar System. Accumulating experiences in…
Coupled one-dimensional photochemical-climate calculations have been performed for hypothetical Earth-like planets around M dwarfs. Visible, near-infrared and thermal-infrared synthetic spectra of these planets were generated to determine…
We find that variations in the UV emissions of cool M-dwarf stars have a potentially large impact upon atmospheric biosignatures in simulations of Earth-like exoplanets i.e. planets with Earths development, and biomass and a molecular…
Recently, many Earth-sized planets have been discovered around stars other than the Sun that might possess appropriate conditions for life. The development of theoretical methods for assessing the putative habitability of these worlds is of…
We use a new interdisciplinary approach to study the UV surface habitability of Proxima $b$ under quiescent and flaring stellar conditions. We assumed planetary atmospheric compositions based on CO$_2$ and N$_2$ and surface pressures from…
Understanding the surface and atmospheric conditions of Earth-size, rocky planets in the habitable zones (HZs) of low-mass stars is currently one of the greatest astronomical endeavors. Knowledge of the planetary effective surface…
Spectral characterization of Super-Earth atmospheres for planets orbiting in the Habitable Zone of M-dwarf stars is a key focus in exoplanet science. A central challenge is to understand and predict the expected spectral signals of…
The search for life beyond the solar system is a central goal in exoplanetary science. Exoplanet surveys are increasingly detecting potentially habitable exoplanets and large telescopes in space and on ground are aiming to detect possible…
A wide variety of scenarios for the origin of life have been proposed, with many influencing the prevalence and distribution of biosignatures across exoplanet populations. This relationship suggests these scenarios can be tested by…
The search for life on extrasolar planets is based on the assumption that one can screen extrasolar planets for habitability spectroscopically. The first space born instruments able to detect as well as characterize extrasolar planets,…
Finding life on exoplanets from telescopic observations is an ultimate goal of exoplanet science. Life produces gases and other substances, such as pigments, which can have distinct spectral or photometric signatures. Whether or not life is…
The biosignatures of life on Earth do not remain static, but change considerably over the planet's habitable lifetime. Earth's future biosphere, much like that of the early Earth, will consist of predominantly unicellular microorganisms due…
Detection of life on other planets requires identification of biosignatures, i.e., observable planetary properties that robustly indicate the presence of a biosphere. One of the most widely accepted biosignatures for an Earth-like planet is…
Previous work on possible surface reflectance biosignatures for Earth-like planets has typically focused on analogues to spectral features produced by photosynthetic organisms on Earth, such as the vegetation red edge. Although oxygenic…
The closest potentially habitable worlds outside our Solar system orbit a different kind of star than our Sun: smaller red dwarf stars. Such stars can flare frequently, bombarding their planets with biologically damaging high-energy UV…