相关论文: Estimating survival probability using the terrestr…

The data recently accumulated by the Kepler mission have demonstrated that small planets are quite common and that a significant fraction of all stars may have an Earth-like planet within their Habitable Zone. These results are combined…

One of the most interesting unsolved questions in science today is the question of life on other planets. At the present time it is safe to say that we do not have much of an idea as to whether life is common or exceedingly rare in the…

One of the most fundamental questions in exoplanetology is to determine whether a given planet is habitable. We estimate the relative likelihood of a planet's propensity towards habitability by considering key physical characteristics such…

Life arose on Earth sometime in the first few hundred million years after the young planet had cooled to the point that it could support water-based organisms on its surface. The early emergence of life on Earth has been taken as evidence…

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…

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…

The early start to life naively suggests that abiogenesis is a rapid process on Earth-like planets. However, if evolution typically takes ~4Gyr to produce intelligent life-forms like us, then the limited lifespan of Earth's biosphere…

If predictions for species extinctions hold, then the `tree of life' today may be quite different to that in (say) 100 years. We describe a technique to quantify how much each species is likely to contribute to future biodiversity, as…

We introduce a mathematical framework for statistical exoplanet population and astrobiology studies that may help directing future observational efforts and experiments. The approach is based on a set of differential equations and provides…

It is sometimes assumed that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. Here we critically examine the assumptions inherent in this if-life-evolved-rapidly-life-must-be-common argument. We use the…

In the search for life in the Universe, exoplanets represent numerous natural experiments in planet formation, evolution, and the emergence of life. This raises the fascinating prospect of evaluating cosmic life on a statistical basis. One…

It is sometimes asserted that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. We critically examine the assumptions inherent in this argument. Using a lottery model for biogenesis in the Universe, we…

As discoveries of multiple planets in the habitable zone of their parent star mount, developing analytical techniques to quantify extrasolar intra-system panspermia will become increasingly important. Here, we provide user-friendly…

The oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere 2.3 billion years ago, which on exoplanets is expected to be most detectable via the UV ozone feature at $\sim$0.25 $\mu$m, is often regarded as a sign of the emergence of photosynthetic life. On…

The fitness of a biological strategy is typically measured by its expected reproductive rate, the first moment of its offspring distribution. However, strategies with high expected rates can also have high probabilities of extinction. A…

Using data drawn from large-scale databases, a number of interesting trends in the fossil record have been observed in recent years. These include the average decline in extinction rates throughout the Phanerozoic, the average increase in…

A simple stochastic model for evolution, based upon the need to pass a sequence of n critical steps (Carter 1983, Watson 2008) is applied to both terrestrial and extraterrestrial origins of life. In the former case, the time at which humans…

Applying survival function analysis to the planet orbital period (P) and semi-major axis (a) distribution from the Kepler sample, we find that all exoplanets are uniformly distributed in (ln a) or (ln P), with an average inner cut-off of…

The astrobiology is an interdisciplinary science, combining the methods and the means of physics, biology, chemistry and astronomy. Its main purpose is to find out if the exoplanets are habitable and if so, to confirm life on them. The…

We present a new approach to exoplanet characterisation using techniques from complexity science, with potential applications to biosignature detection. This agnostic method makes use of the temporal variability of light reflected or…