Related papers: Planetary interior and habitability of exoplanets:…
As of 2025, over 6000 planets are known to orbit stars other than our Sun. We can measure their sizes and orbital periods, infer their masses and temperatures, and constrain their compositions. Based on these data, about 1% of extrasolar…
The giant planets were the first to form and hold the key to unveiling the solar system's formation history in their interiors and atmospheres. Furthermore, the unique conditions present in the interiors of the giant planets make them…
According to the standard liquid-water definition, the Earth is only partially habitable. We reconsider planetary habitability in the framework of energy-balance models, the simplest seasonal models in physical climatology, to assess the…
How can scientists conclude with high confidence that an exoplanet hosts life? As telescopes come on line over the next 20 years that can directly observe photons from terrestrial exoplanets, this question will dictate the activities of…
The investigation of planets around other stars began with the study of gas giants, but is now extending to the discovery and characterization of super-Earths and terrestrial planets. Motivated by this observational tide, we survey the…
Radio Exploration of Planetary Habitability was the fifth in the series of American Astronomical Society's Topical Conference Series. Notable aspects of the conference included the interdisciplinary nature of both the topics and the…
Exomoons may play an important role in determining the habitability of worlds outside of our solar system. They can stabilize conditions, alter the climate by breaking tidal locking with the parent star, drive tidal heating, and perhaps…
We review the observations of extrasolar planets, ongoing developments in theories of planet formation, orbital migration, and the evolution of multiplanet systems.
A habitable zone of a star is defined as a range of orbits within which a rocky planet can support liquid water on its surface. The most intriguing question driving the search for habitable planets is whether they host life. But is the age…
The discovery of a truly habitable exoplanet would be one of the most important events in the history of science. However, the nature and distribution of habitable environments on exoplanets is currently unconstrained. The exoplanet…
Since the launch of Kepler and Hubble more than a decade ago, we have come a long way in the quest to find a potentially habitable exoplanet. To date, we have already discovered more than 4000 exoplanets most of which are not suitable for…
Recent studies have shown that ocean dynamics can have a significant warming effect on the permanent night sides of 1 to 1 tidally locked terrestrial exoplanets with Earth-like atmospheres and oceans in the middle of the habitable zone.…
Exoplanet characterization is one of the main foci of current exoplanetary science. For super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, we mostly rely on mass and radius measurements, which allow to derive the body's mean density and give a rough estimate…
Recent work investigating the impact of winds and outflows from active galactic nuclei (AGN) on the habitability of exoplanets suggests that such activity could be deleterious for the long-term survival of planetary atmospheres and the…
Exoplanet properties depend on how well the host star is characterized. For instance, the stellar atmospheric parameters (i.e., effective temperature, surface gravity and overall metallicity) are needed to derive the stellar mass and radius…
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…
Why bother with asteroseismology while studying exoplanets? There are several answers to this question. Asteroseismology and exoplanetary sciences have much in common and the synergy between the two opens up new aspects in both fields.…
The rapid advances in observations of the different populations of exoplanets, the characterization of their host stars and the links to the properties of their planetary systems, the detailed studies of protoplanetary disks, and the…
The great diversity of extrasolar planetary systems has challenged our understanding of how planets form, and how their orbits evolve as they form. Among the various processes that may account for this diversity, the gravitational…
Stellar magnetism, explorable via polarimetry, is a crucial driver of activity, ionization, photodissociation, chemistry and winds in stellar environments. Thus it has an important impact on the atmospheres and magnetospheres of surrounding…