Related papers: Habitable from the start: How initial planetary fo…
Finding life on exoplanets from telescopic observations is an ultimate goal of exoplanet science. Life produces gases and other substances, such as pigments, which can have distinct spectral or photometric signatures. Whether or not life is…
Carbon is an essential element for a habitable world. Inner (r < 3 au) disk planetary carbon compositions are strongly influenced by supply and survival of carbonaceous solids. Here we trace the journey of carbon from the interstellar…
According to the standard liquid-water definition, the Earth is only partially habitable. We reconsider planetary habitability in the framework of energy-balance models, the simplest seasonal models in physical climatology, to assess the…
How do habitable environments arise and evolve within the context of their planetary systems? This is one fundamental question, and it can be addressed partly by identifying how planets in habitable zones obtain water. Historically,…
The abundances of elements in the Earth and the terrestrial planets provide the initial conditions for life and clues as to the history and formation of the Solar System. We follow the pioneering work of Bond et al. (2010) and combine…
A key result of hydrogravitational dynamics cosmology relevant to astrobiology is the early formation of vast numbers of hot primordial-gas planets in million-solar-mass clumps as the dark matter of galaxies and the hosts of first life.…
Over the past two decades, enormous advances in the detection of exoplanets have taken place. Currently, we have discovered hundreds of earth-sized planets, several of them within the habitable zone of their star. In the coming years, the…
Habitability is usually defined as the requirement for a terrestrial planet's atmosphere to sustain liquid water. This definition can be complemented by the dynamical requirement that other planets in the system do not gravitationally…
With more than 260 extrasolar planetary systems discovered to-date, the search for habitable planets has found new grounds. Unlike our solar system, the stars of many of these planets are hosts to eccentric or close-in giant bodies. Several…
In a multiverse setting, we expect to be situated in a universe that is exceptionally good at producing life. Though the conditions for what life needs to arise and thrive are currently unknown, many will be tested in the coming decades.…
Ongoing and future space missions aim to identify potentially habitable planets in our Solar System and beyond. Planetary habitability is determined not only by a planet's current stellar insolation and atmospheric properties, but also by…
Terrestrial planets in temperate orbits around very low mass stars are likely to have evolved in a very different way than solar system planets, and in particular Earth. However, because these are the first planets that are and will be…
As part of a national scientific network 'Pathways to Habitability' the formation of planets and the delivery of water onto these planets is a key question as water is essential for the development of life. In the first part of the paper we…
How good is our universe at making habitable planets? The answer to this depends on which factors are important for life: Does a planet need to be Earth mass? Does it need to be inside the temperate zone? are systems with hot Jupiters…
In this paper we discuss how we can read a planets spectrum to assess its habitability and search for the signatures of a biosphere. After a decade rich in giant exoplanet detections, observation techniques have now reached the ability to…
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…
In the modern search for life elsewhere in the Universe, we are broadly looking for the following: the planets similar to Earth - physical indicators of habitability, and the manifestation of life - the biological signatures. A biosignature…
Determining the habitability of terrestrial exoplanets is a complex problem that represents the next major step for the astrophysical community. The majority of current models treat these planets as homogeneous or contain heterogeneity that…
Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus and Sulfur (CHNOPS) play key roles in the origin and proliferation of life on Earth. Given the universality of physics and chemistry, not least the ubiquity of water as a solvent and carbon as…
In this chapter we outline some of the basic understanding of the chemistry that accompanies planet formation. We discuss the basic physical environment which dictates the dominant chemical kinetic pathways for molecule formation. We focus…