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 […]
habitability
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 […]
Posted inBiosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Press Release
Early Earth's Haze May Give Clue to Habitability Elsewhere in Space
An atmospheric haze around a faraway planet — like the one which probably shrouded and cooled the young Earth — could show that the world is potentially habitable, or even […]
Posted inHabitable Zones, Press Release
Habitability Index Devised as a Guide to Search for Life
Powerful telescopes are coming soon. Where exactly shall we point them? Astronomers with the University of Washington’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory have created a way to compare and rank exoplanets to […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Status Report
Thorium Abundances in Solar Twins and Analogues: Implications for the Habitability of Extrasolar Planetary Systems
We present the first investigation of Th abundances in Solar twins and analogues to understand the possible range of this radioactive element and its effect on rocky planet interior dynamics […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones
Dynamics and Habitability in Binary Star Systems
Determining planetary habitability is a complex matter, as the interplay between a planet’s physical and atmospheric properties with stellar insolation has to be studied in a self consistent manner. Standardized […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones
Dynamics of Exoplanetary Systems, Links to Their Habitability
Our knowledge of planets’ orbital dynamics, which was based on Solar System studies, has been challenged by the diversity of exoplanetary systems. Around cool and ultra cool dwarfs, the influence […]