Related papers: Life on the Edge: Using Planetary Context to Enhan…
Exoplanet characterization missions planned for the future will soon enable searches for life beyond our solar system. Critical to the search will be the development of life detection strategies that can search for biosignatures while…
Context. Astrobiological evolution of the Milky Way (or the shape of its "astrobiological landscape") has emerged as one of the key research topics in recent years. In order to build precise, quantitative models of the Galactic…
The near-term capability to characterize terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres may bring us closer to discovering alien life through atmospheric data. However, remotely detectable candidate biosignature gases are subject to false positive…
The detection of life on rocky exoplanets in the habitable zones of nearby stars would be a paradigm-shifting advance, and it is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our time. There is no single spectral feature that is an…
The characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres through transit spectra is becoming increasingly feasible, and technology for direct detection remains ongoing. The possibility of detecting spectral features could enable quantitative…
Our understanding of the processes that are relevant to the formation and maintenance of habitable planetary systems is advancing at a rapid pace, both from observation and theory. The present review focuses on recent research that bears on…
Dozens of habitable zone, approximately earth-sized exoplanets are known today. An emerging frontier of exoplanet studies is identifying which of these habitable zone, small planets are actually habitable (have all necessary conditions for…
Life has had a dramatic impact on the composition of Earth's atmosphere over time, which suggests that statistical studies of other inhabited planets' atmospheres could reveal how they co-evolve with life. While many evolutionary pathways…
We study the prospects for life on planets with subsurface oceans, and find that a wide range of planets can exist in diverse habitats with ice envelopes of moderate thickness. We quantify the energy sources available to these worlds, the…
The dynamic nature of life's ability to thrive in diverse and changing planetary environments suggests that habitability and survival depend on the evolutionary path and life adaptation to environmental conditions. Here we explore such…
Understanding the climates of terrestrial exoplanets and the detectability of biosignatures is an inherently interdisciplinary challenge, requiring the integration of insights from Solar System exploration, exoplanet observations and…
The first opportunity to detect indications for life outside the Solar System may be provided already within the next decade with upcoming missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the European Extremely Large Telescope…
Earth's deciduous plants have a sharp order-of-magnitude increase in leaf reflectance between approximately 700 and 750 nm wavelength. This strong reflectance of Earth's vegetation suggests that surface biosignatures with sharp spectral…
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,…
Understanding the surface and atmospheric conditions of Earth-size, rocky planets in the habitable zones (HZs) of low-mass stars is currently one of the greatest astronomical endeavors. Knowledge of the planetary effective surface…
An increasing number of potentially habitable terrestrial planets and planet candidates are found by ongoing planet search programs. The search for atmospheric signatures to establish planetary habitability and the presence of life might be…
Technosignatures refer to observational manifestations of technology that could be detected through astronomical means. Most previous searches for technosignatures have focused on searches for radio signals, but many current and future…
Although many solar systems have been discovered, only one example of life is known. Thus, terrestrial life represents merely one data point. Consequently, extrapolating from terrestrial life to life elsewhere in the galaxy and beyond is…
This paper explores the idea that information is an essential and distinctive feature of living systems. Unlike non-living systems, living systems actively acquire, process, and use information about their environments to respond to…
Many planetary parameters impact the climate state of Earth-like exoplanets and could vary significantly from those on Earth. However, some of these parameters may be impossible to observe, causing ambiguity in determining exoplanet climate…