21 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
René Heller, J. Armstrong
To be habitable, a world (planet or moon) does not need to be located in the stellar habitable zone (HZ), and worlds in the HZ are not necessarily habitable. Here, we illustrate how tidal heating can render terrestrial or icy worlds habitable beyond the stellar HZ. Scientists have developed a language that neglects the…
Duncan H. Forgan
Previous attempts to describe circumbinary habitable zones have been concerned with the spatial extent of the zone, calculated analytically according to the combined radiation field of both stars. By contrast to these "spatial HZs", we present a numerical analysis of the "orbital HZ", a habitable zone defined as a…
Ramses M. Ramirez
To find potentially habitable exoplanets, space missions employ the habitable zone (HZ), which is the region around a star (or multiple stars) where standing bodies of water could exist on the surface of a rocky planet. Follow-up atmospheric characterization could yield biosignatures signifying life. Although most…
Siegfried Eggl, Nikolaos Georgakarakos, Elke Pilat‐Lohinger
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 habitability, whereas Radiative Habitable Zones take the orbital motion of a potentially…
Kevin Heng
Hunting for alien habitats without defining life? Kevin Heng is a professor of astronomy and planetary science at the University of Bern, Switzerland, the director of its Center for Space and Habitability, a subproject leader of the Swiss PlanetS National Center of Competence in Research, and a core science team member…
Owen R. Lehmer, David C. Catling, Joshua Krissansen-Totton
In the conventional habitable zone (HZ) concept, a CO2-H2O greenhouse maintains surface liquid water. Through the water-mediated carbonate-silicate weathering cycle, atmospheric CO2 partial pressure (pCO2) responds to changes in surface temperature, stabilizing the climate over geologic timescales. We show that this…
Marven F. Pedbost, Trillean Pomalgu, Chris Lintott, Nora L. Eisner + 1 more
'Belinda Nicholson'] Since the discovery of the first confirmed exoplanet, observations have revealed a remarkable diversity of worlds. A wide variety of orbital and physical characteristics are detected in the exoplanet population, and much work has been devoted to deciding which of these planets may be suitable for…
Jorge I. Zuluaga, Juan Francisco Salazar, Pablo Cuartas-Restrepo, Germán Poveda
'Germán Poveda'] Abstract. In this paper we discuss and illustrate the hypothesis that life substantially alters the state of a planetary environment and therefore, modifies the limits of the HZ as estimated for an uninhabited planet. This hypothesis lead to the introduction of the Habitable Zone for Inhabited planets…
Guillermo Gonzalez
Our understanding of the processes that are relevant to the formation and maintenance of habitable planetary systems is advancing at a rapid pace, both from observation and theory. The present review focuses on recent research that bears on this topic and includes discussions of processes occurring in astrophysical…
Amanda Truitt, Patrick Young, Alexander Spacek, L. W. Probst + 1 more
'Jeremy Dietrich'] We present stellar evolution models for 0.5 - 1.2 M⊙ at scaled metallicities of 0.1 - 1.5 Z⊙ and O/Fe values of 0.44 - 2.28 O/Fe⊙ . The time dependent evolution of habitable zone boundaries are calculated for each stellar evolution track based on stellar mass, effective temperature, and luminosity…
Whyte, Caldon T., Quiroga-Nuñez, L. H. + 4 more
With recent observations confirming exoplanets orbiting white dwarfs, there is growing interest in exploring and quantifying the habitability of temperate rocky planets around white dwarfs. In this work, the limits of the habitable zone of an Earth-like planet around a white dwarf are computed based on the incident…
David Waltham
This paper presents statistical estimates for the location and duration of habitable zones (HZs) around stars of different mass. The approach is based upon the assumption that Earth's location, and the Sun's mass, should not be highly atypical of inhabited planets. The results support climate-model-based estimates for…
Ian A. Boutle, Manoj Joshi, F. Hugo Lambert, Nathan J. Mayne + 4 more
'Duncan Lyster' 'James Manners' 'Robert Ridgway' 'Krisztian Kohary'] Identification of habitable planets beyond our solar system is a key goal of current and future space missions. Yet habitability depends not only on the stellar irradiance, but equally on constituent parts of the planetary atmosphere. Here we show…
Eva Garcia-Lopez, Cristina Cid
Icy worlds in the solar system and beyond have attracted a remarkable attention as possible habitats for life. The current consideration about whether life exists beyond Earth is based on our knowledge of life in terrestrial cold environments. On Earth, glaciers and ice sheets have been considered uninhabited for a…
L.E. Ratliff, A.H. Fulford, C.I. Pozarycki, G. Wimp + 3 more
To define the boundaries of habitability, biologists often search for highly specialized organisms in extreme environments. However, negative life detections—when a method is unable to detect microorganisms in a given setting—are just as important to constrain the environmental limits of life on Earth. In turn, these…
Aoi Murakami, Yu Komatsu, Kenji Takizawa
The vegetation red-edge of terrestrial plants is a key biosignature for detecting Earth-like habitable exoplanets. Although water is essential for plants, an excess of water can limit the distribution of terrestrial vegetation. On planets with extensive water coverage and limited land, floating vegetation on the…
Holly R. Rucker, Tucker D. Ely, Douglas E. LaRowe, Donato Giovannelli + 1 more
Putative alkaline hydrothermal systems on Noachian Mars were potentially habitable environments for microorganisms. However, the types of reactions that could have fueled microbial life in such systems and the amount of energy available from them have not been quantitatively constrained. In this study, we use…
Timo Conradi, Urs Eggli, Holger Kreft, Andreas H. Schweiger + 2 more
Forecasting the risks of climate change for species and ecosystems is necessary for developing targeted conservation strategies. Previous risk assessments mapped the exposure of the global land surface to changes in climate^1–4^ However, this procedure is unlikely to robustly identify priority areas for conservation…
Adam Robinson, Shannon McQuaig-Ulrich, Tyler Dondero, Aaron Celestian + 1 more
The present-day martian surface is generally considered inhospitable to life because of low atmospheric pressure, intense surface radiation, global desiccation, and oxidizing chemistry which has been increasing since the late Noachian. However, shallow martian subsurface regions where mineralogy has shown groundwater…
Tanja Stratmann, Erik Simon-Lledó, Marcel T. J. van der Meer, Magdalini Christodoulou + 2 more
Abyssal seascapes between 3,000 and 6000 m water depth represent over 50% of the Planet’s surface, but the species, functions, and particularly the life history traits that these ecosystems harbour remain poorly understood. Brittle stars (Ophiuroidea) contribute about one third to the invertebrate megabenthos…
Miguel Arribas Tiemblo, Alicia Rodríguez-Moreno, Felipe Gómez, Ester Lázaro
Viruses are among the simplest biological entities capable of replication. Their robustness and adaptability make them relevant not only to terrestrial ecosystems but also to astrobiological exploration. As durable entities, they may persist in environments far harsher than those tolerable to cellular life and are…