A new method for analyzing the chemical composition of stars may help scientists winnow the search for Earth 2.0. Yale University researchers Debra Fischer and John Michael Brewer, in a […]
habitability
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Convection in Condensible-rich Atmospheres
Condensible substances are nearly ubiquitous in planetary atmospheres. For the most familiar case-water vapor in Earth’s present climate-the condensible gas is dilute, in the sense that its concentration is everywhere […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Surface Composition Determines Temperature and Therefore Habitability of a Planet
Astronomers at KU Leuven, Belgium, have shown that the interaction between the surface and the atmosphere of an exoplanet has major consequences for the temperature on the planet. This temperature, […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
How Planetary Age Reveals Water Content
Water is necessary for life as we know it, but too much water is bad for habitability. Therefore, to study the habitability of extrasolar planets, determining the abundance of water […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
The Evolution of Galaxy Habitability
We combine a semi-analytic model of galaxy evolution with constraints on circumstellar habitable zones and the distribution of terrestrial planets to probe the suitability of galaxies of different mass and […]
Posted inBiosignatures & Paleobiology, Enceladus, Habitable Zones, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Tricorders & Sensors
THEO Concept Mission: Testing the Habitability of Enceladus's Ocean
Saturn’s moon Enceladus offers a unique opportunity in the search for life and habitable environments beyond Earth, a key theme of the National Research Council’s 2013-2022 Decadal Survey. A plume […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Temperature Constraints for Complex Life
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 […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
CD-HPF: New Habitability Score Via Data Analytic Modeling
The search for life on the planets outside the Solar System can be broadly classified into the following: looking for Earth-like conditions or the planets similar to the Earth (Earth […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Press Release
The Effect of Orbital Configuration on the Possible Climates and Habitability of Kepler-62f
As lower-mass stars often host multiple rocky planets, gravitational interactions among planets can have significant effects on climate and habitability over long timescales. Here we explore a specific case, Kepler-62f, […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
The Inhabitance Paradox: How Habitability and Inhabitancy are Inseparable
The dominant paradigm in assigning “habitability”‘ to terrestrial planets is to define a circumstellar habitable zone: the locus of orbital radii in which the planet is neither too hot nor […]