Related papers: Alternative solvents for life: framework for evalu…
The habitable zone (HZ) around a star is typically defined as the region where a rocky planet can maintain liquid water on its surface. That definition is appropriate, because this allows for the possibility that carbon-based,…
Solvation of small and large clusters are studied by simulation, considering a range of solvent-solute attractive energy strengths. Over a wide range of conditions, both for solvation in the Lennard-Jones liquid and in the SPC model of…
Planets composed of large quantities of water that reside in the habitable zone are expected to have distinct geophysics and geochemistry of their surfaces and atmospheres. We explore these properties motivated by two key questions: whether…
Warm rocky exoplanets within the habitable zone of Sun-like stars are favoured targets for current and future missions. Theory indicates these planets could be wet at formation and remain habitable long enough for life to develop. In this…
The existence of life is one of the most fundamental problems of astrophysics. The intriguing existence of progressively complex and apparently improbable living beings should be a general tendency of life in the Universe. We are looking…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to characterize habitable exoplanets in search of signs of life. However, detectable life may be rare, either because abiogenesis is intrinsically contingent and unlikely, or because biospheres…
Civilizations have tried to make drinking water safe to consume for thousands of years. The process of determining water contaminants has evolved with the complexity of the contaminants due to pesticides and heavy metals. The routine…
The current search for habitable planets has focused on Earth-like conditions of mass, volatile content and orbit. However, rocky planets following eccentric orbits, and drier than the Earth, may be a more common phenomenon in the Universe.…
It is often presumed, that life evolves relatively fast on planets with clement conditions, at least in its basic forms, and that extended periods of habitability are subsequently needed for the evolution of higher life forms. Many planets…
Hydrogen bonding liquids, typically water and alcohols, are known to form labile structures (network, chains, etc...), hence the lifetime of such structures is an important microscopic parameter, which can be calculated in computer…
We provide a novel existence result for energy-variational solutions to a general class of evolutionary partial differential equations. Compared to previous works on this solution concept, the generalization is mainly twofold: a relaxation…
Habitability has been generally defined as the capability of an environment to support life. Ecologists have been using Habitat Suitability Models (HSMs) for more than four decades to study the habitability of Earth from local to global…
The study of geological systems requires the solution of complex geochemical relations. We present an implementation of a chemical solver which can handle various types of models, including surface chemistry. The implementation is done in…
Scientists often think of the world (or some part of it) as a dynamical system, a stochastic process, or a generalization of such a system. Prominent examples of systems are (i) the system of planets orbiting the sun or any other classical…
Conventional definitions of habitability require abundant liquid surface water to exist continuously over geologic timescales. Water in each of its thermodynamic phases interacts with solar and thermal radiation and is the cause for strong…
The search for habitable planets, and even for ``Earth 2.0'', is a major driver in contemporary astronomy. However selecting target fields to prioritise for such searches presents a challenge. Here we establish a statistical analysis of the…
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…
As oxygen is essential for respiration and metabolism for multicellular organisms on Earth, its presence may be crucial for the development of a complex biosphere on other planets. And because life itself, through photosynthesis,…
Atmospheres are products of time-integrated mass exchange between the surface of a planet and its interior. On Earth and other planetary bodies, magma oceans likely marked significant atmosphere-forming events, during which both steam- and…
Recently, it was realised that liquid viscosity has a lower bound which is nearly constant for all liquids and is governed by fundamental physical constants. This was supported by experimental data in noble and molecular liquids. Here, we…