Determining habitable zones in binary star systems can be a challenging task due to the combination of perturbed planetary orbits and varying stellar irradiation conditions.
At high redshifts, the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) was higher than its value today. We explore the possibility that life may have arisen early because the higher CMB temperature would have supplied the requisite energy for the existence of different solvents on the surfaces of objects.
SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) aims to perform a transit search on the nearest (<40pc) ultracool (<3000K) dwarf stars.
The earliest atmospheres of rocky planets originate from extensive volatile release during magma ocean epochs that occur during assembly of the planet.
Atmospheric characterisation of temperate, rocky planets is the holy grail of exoplanet studies. These worlds are at the limits of our capabilities with current instrumentation in transmission spectroscopy and challenge our state-of-the-art statistical techniques.
The atmospheric circulation of tidally locked planets is dominated by a superrotating eastward equatorial jet.
We investigate the prospects for the past or current existence of habitable conditions deep underneath the surfaces of the Moon and Mars as well as generic bound and free-floating extrasolar rocky objects.
Cornell University astronomers have created five models representing key points from our planet's evolution, like chemical snapshots through Earth's own geologic epochs.
Since the launch of Kepler and Hubble more than a decade ago, we have come a long way in the quest to find a potentially habitable exoplanet. To date, we have already discovered more than 4000 exoplanets most of which are not suitable for sustaining life.
In this work is investigated the possibility of close-binary star systems having Earth-size planets within their habitable zones.
In the search for life beyond Earth, astronomers look for planets in a star's "habitable zone" -- sometimes nicknamed the "Goldilocks zone" -- where temperatures are just right for liquid water to exist on a planet's surface to nurture life as we know it.
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star's habitable zone, the range of distances where conditions may be just right to allow the presence of liquid water on the surface.
Small exoplanets of nearby M dwarf stars present the possibility to find and characterize habitable worlds within the next decade. TRAPPIST-1, an ultracool M dwarf star, was recently found to have seven Earth-sized planets of predominantly rocky composition.
We use a one-dimensional (1-D) cloud-free climate model to estimate habitable zone (HZ) boundaries for terrestrial planets of masses 0.1 ME and 5 ME around circumbinary stars of various spectral type combinations.
The GJ 357 system harbors 3 planets orbiting a bright, nearby M2.5V star at 9.44pc. The innermost planet GJ 357 b (TOI-562.01) is a hot transiting Earth-size planet with Earth-like density, which receives about 12 times the irradiation Earth receives from the Sun, and was detected using data from TESS.
The Kepler data show that habitable small planets orbiting Red Dwarf stars (RDs) are abundant, and hence might be promising targets to look at for biomarkers and life. Planets orbiting within the Habitable Zone of RDs are close enough to be tidally locked.
The main idea is easy to grasp: Set Goldilocks loose in our galaxy and let her choose a planet that's "just right." For decades, the Goldilocks zone has been the go-to shorthand for scientists. More formally known as the "habitable zone," it's the region around a star where the temperature is just right for liquid water to pool on the surface of planets with suitable atmospheres.
New instruments and telescopes, such as SPIRou, CARMENES and TESS, will increase manyfold the number of known planets orbiting M dwarfs.
We investigate the hypothesis that the size of the habitable zone around hardened binaries in dense star-forming regions increases. Our results indicate that this hypothesis is essentially incorrect.
High obliquity planets represent potentially extreme limits of terrestrial climate, as they exhibit large seasonality, a reversed annual-mean pole-to-equator gradient of stellar heating, and novel cryospheres.