Related papers: The Galactic Habitable Zone I. Galactic Chemical E…
The habitability of a planet is influenced by both its parent star and the properties of its local stellar neighborhood. Potential threats to habitability from the local stellar environment mainly arise from two factors: cataclysmic events…
Future direct imaging space telescopes, such as NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), will be the first capable of both detecting and characterizing terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zones (HZ) of nearby Sun-like stars. Since…
The circumstellar liquid-water habitable zone guides our search for potentially inhabited exoplanets, but remains observationally untested. We show that the inner edge of the habitable zone can now be mapped among exoplanets using their…
The internal thermal and magnetic evolution of rocky exoplanets is critical to their habitability. We focus on the thermal-orbital evolution of Earth-mass planets around low mass M stars whose radiative habitable zone overlaps with the…
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…
A balanced ratio of ocean to land is believed to be essential for an Earth-like biosphere and one may conjecture that plate-tectonics planets should be similar in geological properties. After all, the volume of continental crust evolves…
Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of low-mass stars undergo strong tidal effects that modify their spin states. These planets are expected to host dense atmospheres that can also play an important role in the spin evolution. On one…
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…
In an effort to derive temperature based criteria of habitability for multicellular life, we investigated the thermal limits of terrestrial poikilotherms, i.e. organisms whose body temperature and the functioning of all vital processes is…
We study the magnetospheric structure and the ionospheric Joule Heating of planets orbiting M-dwarf stars in the habitable zone using a set of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models. The stellar wind solution is used to drive a model for the…
In the conventional habitable zone (HZ) concept, a CO$_{2}$-H$_2$O greenhouse maintains surface liquid water. Through the water-mediated carbonate-silicate weathering cycle, atmospheric CO$_{2}$ partial pressure (pCO$_{2}$) responds to…
The initial abundance of radioactive heat producing isotopes in the interior of a terrestrial planet are important drivers of its thermal evolution and the related tectonics and possible evolution to an Earth-like habitat. The moderately…
Models of planet formation have shown that giant planets have a large impact on the number, masses and orbits of terrestrial planets that form. In addition, they play an important role in delivering volatiles from material that formed…
Several concepts have been brought forward to determine where terrestrial planets are likely to remain habitable in multi-stellar environments. Isophote-based habitable zones, for instance, rely on insolation geometry to predict…
The bulk chemical composition and interior structure of rocky exoplanets are of fundamental importance to understanding their long-term evolution and potential habitability. Observations of the chemical compositions of the solar system…
The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) is a ring-like accumulation of molecular gas in the innermost few hundred parsecs of the Milky Way, generated by the inward transport of matter driven by the Galactic bar. The CMZ is the most extreme…
We have developed a comprehensive methodology and an interactive website for calculating the habitable zone (HZ) of multiple star systems. Using the concept of spectral weight factor, as introduced in our previous studies of the…
We study the stellar mass-gas metallicity relation (MZR) which shows a significant scatter for a fixed stellar mass. By defining global environments, nodes, filaments, and voids within the Horizon Run 5 cosmological hydrodynamical…
Rocky planet atmospheres form and evolve through interactions between the planet's surface and interior. If a growing rocky planet acquires enough mass prior to the dissipation of the nebular gas disk, it can gravitationally capture a…
Of the few thousand discovered exoplanets, a significant number orbit in the habitable zone of their star. Many of them are gas giants lacking a rocky surface and solid water reservoirs necessary for life as we know it. The search for…