Related papers: A Framework for Relative Biosignature Yields from …
Oxygen is a well-studied biosignature. Studying potential abiotic pathways for O2 build-up in exoplanet atmospheres is essential for evaluating whether the detection of O2 would constitute a biosignature detection on other worlds. Previous…
Low mass stars ($\leq 1$ M$_{\odot}$) are some of the best candidates for hosting planets with detectable life because of these stars' long lifetimes and relative planet to star mass and radius ratios. An important aspect of these stars to…
The goals of the astrobiology community are focussed on developing a framework for the detection of biosignatures, or evidence thereof, on objects inside and outside of our solar system. A fundamental aspect of understanding the limits of…
The cosmic origin of carbon, a fundamental building block of life, is still uncertain. Yield predictions for massive stars are almost exclusively based on single star models, even though a large fraction interact with a binary companion.…
The search for a second instance of life is one of the greatest problems of modern science. Outside of creating an artificial origin of life on Earth, the primary targets for the search for life are planets inside or outside the solar…
Many transiting planet host stars lack high resolution imaging and thus close stellar sources can be missed. Those unknown stars potentially bias the derivation of the planetary and stellar parameters from the transit light curve, no matter…
Understanding how giant and terrestrial planets form and evolve, what is their internal structure and that of their atmosphere, represents one of the major challenges of modern astronomy, which is directly connected to the ultimate search…
Knowing the high-energy radiation environment of a star over a planet's formation and evolutionary period is critical in determining if that planet is potentially habitable and if any biosignatures could be detected, as UV radiation can…
The current progress in the detection of terrestrial type exoplanets has opened a new avenue in the characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres and in the search for biosignatures of life with the upcoming ground-based and space missions.…
NASA's next flagship observatory, the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), aims to detect and charaterize ~25 habitable zone planets. The total number of habitable zone planets detected is referred to as the exo-Earth "yield'' and accurate…
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…
Stellar high-energy radiation is a key driver of atmospheric erosion and evolution in exoplanets, directly affecting their long-term habitability. We present a comprehensive study on stellar high-energy radiation and its impact on…
This study develops a robust framework for exoplanet characterization by leveraging asteroseismic constraints on host stars. Using precise photometric data from missions such as \textit{Kepler} and \textit{TESS}, we derive stellar…
The currently favored method for estimating radii and other parameters of transiting-planet host stars is to match theoretical models to observations of the stellar mean density rho_*, the effective temperature T_eff, and the composition…
Aims: We predict the exoplanet yield of a space-based mid-infrared nulling interferometer using Monte Carlo simulations. We quantify the number and properties of detectable exoplanets and identify those target stars that have the highest or…
One of the persistent complications in searches for transiting exoplanets is the low percentage of the detected candidates that ultimately prove to be planets, which significantly increases the load on the telescopes used for the follow-up…
Here we review how environmental context can be used to interpret whether O2 is a biosignature in extrasolar planetary observations. This paper builds on the overview of current biosignature research discussed in Schwieterman et al. (2017),…
One of the most promising methods of discovering nearby, low-mass planets in the habitable zones of stars is the precision radial velocity technique. However, there are many challenges that must be overcome to efficiently detect…
We explore the astrobiological significance of F-type stars of spectral type between F5 V and F9.5 V, which possess Jupiter-type planets within or close to their climatological habitable zones. These planets, or at least a subset of those,…
Direct imaging of widely separated exoplanets from space will obtain their reflected light spectra and measure atmospheric properties. Previous calculations have shown that a change in the orbital phase would cause a spectral signal, but…