Related papers: Network and Kinetics-based Biosignatures: Implicat…
The National Academy of Science Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee, in its new Decadal survey entitled Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium, recommends, as a first priority, the establishment of a National Virtual…
Astrophysical research into exoplanets has delivered thousands of confirmed planets orbiting distant stars. These planets span a wide ranges of size and composition, with diversity also being the hallmark of system configurations, the great…
NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to achieve starlight suppression to the $10^{-10}$ level for the detection and spectral characterization of Earth-like exoplanets. Broadband ozone absorption features are key biosignatures that…
With thousands of exoplanets now identified, the characterization of habitable planets and the potential identification of inhabited ones is a major challenge for the coming decades. We review the current working definition of habitable…
Kepler, K2, TESS, and similar time-domain photometric projects, while designed with exoplanet detection in mind, are also well-suited projects for searches for large artificial structures orbiting other stars in the Galaxy. An effort to…
We discuss the possibility of screening the atmosphere of exomoons for habitability. We concentrate on Earth-like satellites of extrasolar giant planets (EGP) which orbit in the Habitable Zone of their host stars. The detectability of…
As the only known habitable (and inhabited) planet in the universe, Earth informs our search for life elsewhere. Future telescopes like the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will soon look for life on rocky worlds around Sun-like stars, so…
There are many open questions about prebiotic chemistry in both planetary and exoplanetary environments. The increasing number of known exoplanets and other ultra-cool, substellar objects has propelled the desire to detect life and…
The search for biosignatures necessitates developing our understanding of life under different conditions. If life can influence the climate evolution of its planet then understanding the behaviour of life-climate feedbacks under extreme…
Cloud computing offers an opportunity to run compute-resource intensive climate models at scale by parallelising model runs such that datasets useful to the exoplanet community can be produced efficiently. To better understand the…
In the next decades, the astrobiological community will debate whether the first observations of oxygen in an exoplanet$'$s atmosphere signifies life, so it is critical to establish procedures now for collection and interpretation of such…
Planets residing in circumstellar habitable zones (CHZs) offer our best opportunities to test hypotheses of life's potential pervasiveness and complexity. Constraining the precise boundaries of habitability and its observational…
Multi-planet systems produce a wealth of information for exoplanet science, but our understanding of planetary architectures is incomplete. Probing these systems further will provide insight into orbital architectures and formation…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory Preliminary Input Catalog (HPIC) is a list of ~13,000 nearby bright stars that will be potential targets for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) in its search for Earth-sized planets around Sun-like…
Understanding a planet's atmosphere is a necessary condition for understanding not only the planet itself, but also its formation, structure, evolution, and habitability, This puts a premium on obtaining spectra, and developing credible…
The current goals of the astrobiology community are focused 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…
In the JWST, Extremely Large Telescopes, and LUVOIR era, we expect to characterize a number of potentially habitable Earth-like exoplanets. However, the characterization of these worlds depends crucially on the accuracy of theoretical…
Studying the atmospheres of exoplanets is one of the most promising ways to learn about distant worlds beyond our solar system. The composition of an exoplanet's atmosphere can provide critical insights into its geology and potential…
This paper is devoted to exploring how we can discover and study nearby (< 1-2 kpc) planetary and binary systems by observing their action as gravitational lenses. Lensing can extend the realm of nearby binaries and planets that can be…
The search for habitable conditions beyond Earth is a top priority in astrophysics. The discovery of habitable exoplanets beyond our solar system will require a suite of instruments providing long-term monitoring for detection (e.g. with…