Related papers: Towards a Classification Scheme for the Rocky Plan…
The oxidation of rocky planet surfaces and atmospheres, which arises from the twin forces of stellar nucleosynthesis and gravitational differentiation, is a universal process of key importance to habitability and exoplanet biosignature…
The standard picture of planet formation posits that giant gas planets are over-grown rocky planets massive enough to attract enormous gas atmospheres. It has been shown recently that the opposite point of view is physically plausible: the…
Mars is the Solar System's canonical small, rocky planet that transitioned from early geologic activity and surface liquid water to a cold and arid planet with a thin, cold, CO$_2$-dominated atmosphere. The evolution of Mars, in the context…
The inner edge of the classical habitable zone is often defined by the critical flux needed to trigger the runaway greenhouse instability. This 1D notion of a critical flux, however, may not be so relevant for inhomogeneously irradiated…
Planets that revolve around a binary pair of stars are known as circumbinary planets. The orbital motion of the stars around their center of mass causes a periodic variation in the total instellation incident upon a circumbinary planet.…
Ongoing and future space missions aim to identify potentially habitable planets in our Solar System and beyond. Planetary habitability is determined not only by a planet's current stellar insolation and atmospheric properties, but also by…
Rocky planets in our Solar System, namely Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the Moon, which is generally added to this group due to its geological complexity, possess a solid surface and share a common structure divided into major layers,…
The potential habitability of a terrestrial planet is usually defined by the possible existence of liquid water on its surface. The potential presence of liquid water depends on many factors such as, most importantly, surface temperatures.…
Earth's climate, mantle, and core interact over geologic timescales. Climate influences whether plate tectonics can take place on a planet, with cool climates being favorable for plate tectonics because they enhance stresses in the…
The characterization of nearby rocky exoplanets will become feasible with the next generation of telescopes, such as the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and the mission concept Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). Using an improved model…
With the increasing number of detected exoplanet samples, the statistical properties of planetary systems have become much clearer. In this review, we summarize the major statistics that have been revealed mainly by radial velocity and…
Transmission spectroscopy of Earth-like exoplanets is a potential tool for habitability screening. Transiting planets are present-day "Rosetta Stones" for understanding extrasolar planets because they offer the possibility to characterize…
The quest for atmospheric spectral signatures that may witness biological activity in exoplanets is focused on rocky planets. The best targets for future, challenging spectroscopic observations will be selected among potentially habitable…
Earth-Like is an interactive website and twitter bot that allows users to explore changes in the average global surface temperature of an Earth-like planet due to variations in the surface oceans and emerged land coverage, rate of volcanism…
Venus may have had both an Earth-like climate as well as extensive water oceans and active (or incipient) plate tectonics for an extended interval of its history. The topographical power spectrum of Venus provides important clues to the…
Recent advances in space and ground-based facilities now enable atmospheric characterization of a selected sample of rocky exoplanets. These atmospheres offer key insights into planetary formation and evolution, but their interpretation…
Large ground- and space-based telescopes will be able to observe Earth-like planets in the near future. We explore how different planetary surfaces can strongly influence the climate, atmospheric composition, and remotely detectable spectra…
Future telescopes will characterize rocky exoplanets in reflected light, revealing their albedo, which depends on surface, cloud, and atmospheric properties. Identifying these features is crucial for assessing habitability. We present…
Geometrical approach to the phenomenological theory of phase transitions of the second kind at constant pressure $P$ and variable temperature $T$ is proposed. Equilibrium states of a system at zero external field and fixed $P$ and $T$ are…
We have studied the geological time evolution of volcanism in Earth and other inner solar system planetary bodies (Mercury, Moon, Mars and Venus) in both geophysical and biophysical perspective. The record of Large Igneous Provinces in…