相关论文: Abiotic molecular oxygen production -- ionic pathw…
The abundances of atmospheric carbon species--carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and methane (CH4)--exert fundamental controls on the climate, redox state, and prebiotic environment of terrestrial planets. As exoplanet atmospheric…
The oxidation of rocky planet surfaces and atmospheres, which arises from the twin forces of stellar nucleosynthesis and gravitational differentiation, is a universal process of key importance to habitability and exoplanet biosignature…
Charged dust grains in the atmospheres of exoplanets may play a key role in the formation of prebiotic molecules, necessary to the origin of life. Dust grains submerged in an atmospheric plasma become negatively charged and attract a flux…
The formation of life is an automatic stage in the consolidation of rocky or "terrestrial" planets. The organic (=carbonaceous) matter, light elements, gases, and water must "float" toward the surface and the heavier metals must sink toward…
Carbon is an essential element for life on Earth, and the relative abundances of major carbon species (CO2, CO, and CH4) in the atmosphere exert fundamental controls on planetary climate and biogeochemistry. Here, we employed a theoretical…
The photosystem II reaction centre is the photosynthetic complex responsible for oxygen production on Earth. Its water splitting function is particularly favoured by the formation of a stable charge separated state via a pathway that starts…
Some atmospheric gases have been proposed as counter indicators to the presence of life on an exoplanet if remotely detectable at sufficient abundance (i.e., antibiosignatures), informing the search for biosignatures and potentially…
Ozone ($\textrm{O}_3$) is important for the survival of life on Earth because it shields the surface from ionising ultraviolet (UV) radiation. However, the existence of $\textrm{O}_3$ in Earth's atmosphere is not always beneficial.…
The most important thermodynamic work performed by life today is the dissipation of the solar photon flux into heat through organic pigments in water. From this thermodynamic perspective, biological evolution is thus just the dispersal of…
Water is the main component of interstellar ice mantles, is abundant in the solar system and is a crucial ingredient for life. The formation of this molecule in the interstellar medium cannot be explained by gas-phase chemistry only and its…
Terrestrial exoplanets likely form initial atmospheres through outgassing during and after accretion, although there is currently no first-principles understanding of how to connect a planet's bulk composition to its early atmospheric…
The origin of life on Earth seems to demand a highly reduced early atmosphere, rich in CH4, H2, and NH3, but geological evidence suggests that Earth's mantle has always been relatively oxidized and its emissions dominated by CO2 H2O, and…
With the recent discoveries of terrestrial planets around active M-dwarfs, destruction processes masking the possible presence of life are receiving increased attention in the exoplanet community. We investigate potential biosignatures of…
We review the field of exoplanetary biosignatures with a main focus upon atmospheric gas-phase species. Due to the paucity of data in Earth-like planetary atmospheres a common approach is to extrapolate knowledge from the Solar System and…
Water dimer $(\text{H}_2\text{O})_2$ -- a vital component of the earth's atmosphere -- is an important prototypical hydrogen-bonded system. It provides direct insight into fundamental chemical and biochemical processes, e.g., proton…
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…
Despite their importance for determining the evolution of the Earth's atmosphere and surface conditions, the evolutionary histories of the Earth's atmospheric CO$_2$ abundance during the Archean eon and the Sun's activity are poorly…
About 2.5 billion years ago, microbes learned to harness plentiful solar energy to reduce CO$_2$ with H$_2$O, extracting energy and producing O$_2$ as waste. O$_2$ production from this metabolic process was so vigorous that it saturated its…
In the past decade, observations from space and ground have found H$_2$O to be the most abundant molecular species, after hydrogen, in the atmospheres of hot, gaseous, extrasolar planets. Being the main molecular carrier of oxygen, H$_2$O…
The striking recent putative detection of "dark oxygen" (dark O$_2$) sources on the abyssal ocean floor in the Pacific at $\sim 4$ km depth raises the intriguing scenario that complex (i.e., animal-like) life could exist in underwater…