Related papers: Enabling Effective Exoplanet / Planetary Collabora…
International research collaboration among global scientific powerhouses has exhibited a discernible trend towards convergence in recent decades. Notably, the US and China have significantly fortified their collaboration across diverse…
Exoplanet science is booming. In 20 years our knowledge has expanded considerably, from the first discovery of a Hot Jupiter, to the detection of a large population of Neptunes and super-Earths, to the first steps toward the…
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 recommend an intensive effort to survey and understand the obliquity distribution of small close-in extrasolar planets over the coming decade. The orbital obliquities of exoplanets--i.e., the relative orientation between the planetary…
Exoplanets around different types of stars provide a window into the diverse environments in which planets form. This chapter describes the observed relations between exoplanet populations and stellar properties and how they connect to…
Provided that sufficient resources are deployed, we can look forward to an extraordinary future in which we will characterize potentially habitable planets. Until now, we have had to base interpretations of observations on habitability…
Exoplanets are now being discovered in profusion. However, to understand their character requires spectral models and data. These elements of remote sensing can yield temperatures, compositions, and even weather patterns, but only if…
Our uncertainties about binary star systems (and triples and so on) limit our capabilities in literally every single one of the Thematic Areas identified for Astro2020. We need to understand the population statistics of stellar multiplicity…
Whereas the Solar System has Mars and Europa as the best candidates for finding fossil/extant life as we know it - based on complex carbon compounds and liquid water - the 263 (non-pulsar) planetary systems around other stars as known at 15…
The field of exoplanet atmospheric characterization has recently made considerable advances with the advent of high-resolution spectroscopy from large ground-based telescopes and the commissioning of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).…
Advances in science and engineering often reveal the limitations of classical approaches initially used to understand, predict, and control phenomena. With progress, conceptual categories must often be re-evaluated to better track recently…
For centuries, humanity wondered if there were other worlds like ours in the Universe. For about a quarter of a century, we have known that planetary systems exist around other stars, and more than 3800 exoplanetary systems have been…
Exoplanet detection in the past decade by efforts including NASA's Kepler and TESS missions has discovered many worlds that differ substantially from planets in our own Solar System, including more than 150 exoplanets orbiting binary or…
A detailed understanding of the physics of star and planet formation requires study of individual objects as well as statistical assessment of global properties and evolutionary trends. Observational investigations of circumstellar material…
Over the last twenty years, the search for extrasolar planets revealed us the rich diversity of the outcomes of the formation and evolution of planetary systems. In order to fully understand how these extrasolar planets came to be, however,…
Just fourteen years ago the Solar System represented the only known planetary system in the Galaxy, and conceptions of planet formation were shaped by this sample of one. Since then, 320 planets have been discovered orbiting 276 individual…
Present and upcoming NASA missions will be intensively observing a selected, partially overlapping set of stars for exoplanet studies. Key physical and chemical information about these stars and their systems is needed for planning…
I will propose a new way of advancing white dwarf research. Open science is a method of doing research that lets everyone who has something to say about the subject take part in the problem solving process. Already now, the amount of…
In recent years, numerical models that were developed for Earth have been adapted to study exoplanetary climates to understand how the broad range of possible exoplanetary properties affects their climate state. The recent discovery and…
In the last few years, significant advances have been made in understanding the distributions of exoplanet populations and the architecture of planetary systems. We review the recent progress of planet statistics, with a focus on the inner…