Related papers: Gaia as Solaris: An Alternative Default Evolutiona…
The scientific output of the proposed EChO mission (in terms of spectroscopic characterization of the atmospheres of transiting extrasolar planets) will be maximized by a careful selection of targets and by a detailed characterization of…
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…
Our understanding of the properties and demographics of exoplanets critically relies on our ability to determine fundamental properties of their host stars. The advent of Gaia and large spectroscopic surveys has now made it in principle…
In the search for life beyond our Solar system, attention should be focused on those planets that have the potential to maintain habitable conditions over the prolonged periods of time needed for the emergence and expansion of life as we…
Life emerged on the Earth within the first quintile of its habitable window, but a technological civilization did not blossom until its last. Efforts to infer the rate of abiogenesis, based on its early emergence, are frustrated by the…
This paper reviews habitability conditions for a terrestrial planet from the point of view of geosciences. It addresses how interactions between the interior of a planet or a moon and its atmosphere and surface (including hydrosphere and…
A major focus of the planetary science and astrobiology community is the understanding of planetary habitability, including the myriad factors that control the evolution and sustainability of temperate surface environments such as that of…
Energetic particles, such as stellar cosmic rays, produced at a heightened rate by active stars (like the young Sun) may have been important for the origin of life on Earth and other exoplanets. Here we compare, as a function of stellar…
Planetary systems appear to form contemporaneously around young stars within young star-forming regions. Within these environments, the chances of survival, as well as the long-term evolution of these systems, are influenced by factors such…
The search for spectroscopic biosignatures with the next-generation of space telescopes could provide observational constraints on the abundance of exoplanets with signs of life. An extension of this spectroscopic characterization of…
In this white paper, we recommend the European Space Agency plays a proactive role in developing a global collaborative effort to construct a large high-contrast imaging space telescope, e.g. as currently under study by NASA. Such a mission…
We live in an age where an enormous amount of astrometric, photometric, asteroseismic, and spectroscopic data of Milky Way stars are being acquired, many orders of magnitude larger than about a decade ago. Thanks to the Gaia astrometric…
The search for life in the universe mainly uses modern Earth as a template. However, we know that Earth's atmospheric composition changed significantly through its geological evolution. Recent discoveries show that transiting, potentially…
The typical methodology for comparing simulated galaxies with observational surveys is usually to apply a spatial selection to the simulation to mimic the region of interest covered by a comparable observational survey sample. In this work…
Humanity has wondered whether we are alone for millennia. The discovery of life elsewhere in the Universe, particularly intelligent life, would have profound effects, comparable to those of recognizing that the Earth is not the center of…
The power of micro-arcsecond ($\mu$as) astrometry is about to be unleashed. ESA's Gaia mission, now headed towards the end of the first year of routine science operations, will soon fulfil its promise for revolutionary science in countless…
The GAIA satellite will observe the Galaxy and its closest satellites in great detail. This should allow (i) dating past events of dwarf galaxies merging or interacting with the Galaxy, and much improved orbital parameters of the nine dwarf…
Most Sun-like and higher-mass stars reside in systems that include one or more gravitationally bound stellar companions. These systems offer an important probe of planet formation in the most common stellar systems, while also providing key…
Here, we evaluate our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus, as an exemplar of the runaway greenhouse state that bounds the inner edge of the habitable zone. Despite its current hellish surface environment, Venus may once have been habitable…
In the era of large-scale surveys of stars in the Milky Way, stellar ages are crucial for studying the evolution of the Galaxy. But determining ages of field stars is notoriously difficult; therefore, we attempt to determine benchmark ages…