Related papers: Wind Power as a Technosignature on M-dwarf Planets
Recently, many Earth-sized planets have been discovered around stars other than the Sun that might possess appropriate conditions for life. The development of theoretical methods for assessing the putative habitability of these worlds is of…
How much wind energy does the atmosphere generate, and how much of it can at best be used as renewable energy? This review aims to give first-order estimates and sensitivities to answer these questions that are consistent with those…
Oxygen and methane are considered to be the canonical biosignatures of modern Earth, and the simultaneous detection of these gases in a planetary atmosphere is an especially strong biosignature. However, these gases may be challenging to…
The prospects for the habitability of M-dwarf planets have long been debated, due to key differences between the unique stellar and planetary environments around these low-mass stars, as compared to hotter, more luminous Sun-like stars.…
Several processes can cause the shape of an extrasolar giant planet's shadow, as viewed in transit, to depart from circular. In addition to rotational effects, cloud formation, non-homogenous haze production and movement, and dynamical…
Understanding the complex behavior of High Mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) is not possible without detailed information about their donor stars. While crucial, this turns out to be a challenge on multiple fronts. First, multi-wavelength…
Terrestrial exoplanets orbiting M-dwarf stars are promising targets for transmission spectroscopy with existing or near-future instrumentation. The atmospheric composition of such rocky planets remains an open question, especially given the…
Recent advances in the modelling of stellar winds driven by radiation pressure make it possible to fit many wind-sensitive features in the UV spectra of hot stars, opening the way for a hydrodynamically consistent determination of stellar…
Thanks to the high sensitivity of the instruments on board the XMM-Newton and Chandra satellites, it has become possible to explore the properties of the X-ray emission from hot subdwarfs. The small but growing sample of hot subdwarfs…
We address the important question of whether the newly discovered exoplanet, Proxima Centauri b (PCb), is capable of retaining an atmosphere over long periods of time. This is done by adapting a sophisticated multi-species MHD model…
Due to the unprecedented signal strengths offered by the newest high-resolution spectrographs on 10-m class telescopes, exploring the 3D nature of exoplanets is possible with an unprecedented level of precision. In this paper, we present a…
Whether there is a cosmic shoreline that divides terrestrial planets which have atmospheres from those that don't is one of the biggest open questions in exoplanet science. Most atmosphere searches have focused on terrestrial planets around…
Observations and models suggest that the conditions to develop lightning may be present in cloud-forming extrasolar planetary and brown dwarf atmospheres. Whether lightning on these objects is similar to or very different from what is known…
This review describes the evidence for small-scale structure, `clumping', in the radiation line-driven winds of hot, massive stars. In particular, we focus on examining to what extent simulations of the strong instability inherent to…
The presence of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in Earth's atmosphere is a direct result of technology. Ozone-depleting CFCs have been banned by most countries, but some CFCs have persistent in elevated concentrations due to their long…
Exoplanets are now being discovered in profusion. However, to understand their character requires spectral models and data. These elements of remote sensing can yield temperatures, compositions, and even weather patterns, but only if…
Context. The atmosphere of exoplanets has been studied extensively in recent years, using numerical models to retrieve chemical composition, dynamical circulation or temperature from data. One of the best observational probes in…
We report the detection and monitoring of transient substructures in the radiation-driven winds of five massive, hot stars in different evolutionary stages. Clumping in the winds of these stars shows up as variable, narrow subpeaks…
Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe) are ideal astrophysical laboratories where high energy relativistic phenomena can be investigated. They are close, well resolved in our observations, and the knowledge derived in their study has a strong impact in…
Magnetic fields on hot stars can produce a variety of interesting effects on the velocity, density, and temperature structure in the winds from the stars. The fields can produce a longitudinal dependence of the mass flux, which would lead…