What fascinates people about astrobiology is that it seeks answers to long-standing unsolved questions: How quickly did life evolve on Earth and why did life persist here? Is there life elsewhere in the Solar System or beyond? Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction explores some of the big unanswered questions about the universe, considers the origins of life on Earth and its evolution, and brings together the ideas of microbiologists, astronomers, planetary scientists, and geologists. It introduces the origins of astrobiology and demonstrates its impact on current astronomical research and…
We address disequilibrium abundances of some simple molecules in the atmospheres of solar composition brown dwarfs and self-luminous extrasolar giant planets using a kinetics-based one-dimensional atmospheric chemistry model. Our approach is to use the full kinetics model to survey the parameter space with effective temperatures between 500 K and 1100 K. In all of these worlds, equilibrium chemistry favors CH4 over CO in the parts of the atmosphere that can be seen from Earth, but in most disequilibrium favors CO.
Earth-like planets within the liquid water habitable zone of M-type stars may evolve into synchronous rotators. On these planets, the substellar hemisphere experiences perpetual daylight while the opposing antistellar hemisphere experiences perpetual darkness. Because the night-side hemisphere has no direct source of energy, the air over this side of the planet is prone to freeze out and deposit on the surface, which could result in atmospheric collapse. However, general circulation models (GCMs) have shown that atmospheric dynamics can counteract this problem and provide sufficient energy transport to the antistellar side. Here, we use an idealized GCM to consider the impact of geothermal heating on the habitability of synchronously rotating planets.
Embedded in the gaseous protoplanetary disk, Jupiter and Saturn naturally become trapped in 3:2 resonance and migrate outward. This serves as the basis of the Grand Tack model. However, previous hydrodynamical simulations were restricted to isothermal disks, with moderate aspect ratio and viscosity. Here we simulate the orbital evolution of the gas giants in disks with viscous heating and radiative cooling. We find that Jupiter and Saturn migrate outward in 3:2 resonance in modest-mass (M disk ≈ M MMSN, where MMSN is the “minimum-mass solar nebula”) disks with viscous stress parameter α between 10–3 and 10–2. In disks with relatively low-mass (M disk lesssim M MMSN), Jupiter and Saturn get captured in 2:1 resonance and can even migrate outward in low-viscosity disks (α ≤ 10–4). Such disks have a very small aspect ratio (h ~ 0.02-0.03) that favors outward migration after capture in 2:1 resonance, as confirmed by isothermal runs which resulted in a similar outcome for h ~ 0.02 and α ≤ 10–4. We also performed N-body runs of the outer solar system starting from the results of our hydrodynamical simulations and including 2-3 ice giants. After dispersal of the gaseous disk, a Nice model instability starting with Jupiter and Saturn in 2:1 resonance results in good solar systems analogs. We conclude that in a cold solar nebula, the 2:1 resonance between Jupiter and Saturn can lead to outward migration of the system, and this may represent an alternative scenario for the evolution of the solar system.
We report the discovery of one newly confirmed planet (P = 66.06 days, R P = 2.68 ± 0.17 R ⊕) and mass determinations of two previously validated Kepler planets, Kepler-289 b (P = 34.55 days, R P = 2.15 ± 0.10 R ⊕) and Kepler-289-c (P = 125.85 days, R P = 11.59 ± 0.10 R ⊕), through their transit timing variations (TTVs). We also exclude the possibility that these three planets reside in a 1:2:4 Laplace resonance.
We propose a method to distinguish between cloudy, hazy, and clear sky (free of clouds and hazes) exoplanet atmospheres that could be applicable to upcoming large aperture space- and ground-based telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). These facilities will be powerful tools for characterizing transiting exoplanets, but only after a considerable amount of telescope time is devoted to a single planet. A technique that could provide a relatively rapid means of identifying haze-free targets (which may be more valuable targets for characterization) could potentially increase the science return for these telescopes. Our proposed method utilizes broadband observations of refracted light in the out-of-transit spectrum.
We present a method to detect small atmospheric signals in Kepler’s planet candidate light curves by averaging light curves for multiple candidates with similar orbital and physical characteristics. Our statistical method allows us to measure unbiased physical properties of Kepler’s planet candidates, even for candidates whose individual signal-to-noise precludes the detection of their secondary eclipse.
The Archean atmosphere was likely a weakly reduced mixture composed predominantly of N2 and CO2, with smaller concentrations of H2, CO, and CH4. Both CO2 and N2 may have been present in abundances exceeding today’s values, by a factor of 2 or more for N2 and by factors of 100 or more for CO2. Published upper limits on CO2 from paleosols and banded iron formations are probably invalid; hence, CO2 could have been the dominant greenhouse gas that compensated for the fainter young Sun. The Archean greenhouse effect was likely supplemented by CH4, which could have risen to levels of 1000 ppmv or more once methanogens had evolved. Warming by CH4 was limited to approximately 10–12°, however, by formation of organic haze. The key to analyzing Archean atmospheric composition is to understand the hydrogen budget of the atmosphere in which outgassing of H2 and other reduced gases from volcanoes was balanced by loss of hydrogen to space and burial of organic carbon in sediments. The mixing ratio of O2 in such a weakly reduced atmosphere would have been extremely low, roughly 10− 13 at the surface, increasing to ~ 10− 3 in the upper stratosphere. A rise in O2 just after the end of the Archean may have eliminated the methane greenhouse and triggered the Paleoproterozoic glaciations.
Here we report observations of the transmission spectrum of the exoplanet HAT-P-11b (which has a radius about four times that of Earth) from the optical wavelength range to the infrared. We detected water vapour absorption at a wavelength of 1.4 micrometres. The amplitude of the water absorption (approximately 250 parts per million) indicates that the planetary atmosphere is predominantly clear down to an altitude corresponding to about 1 millibar, and sufficiently rich in hydrogen to have a large scale height (over which the atmospheric pressure varies by a factor of e).
National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Kepler Space Telescope has detected over 3,000 planet candidates, about a dozen of which are probably rocky planets within the liquid-water habitable zones of their parent stars. Climate-modeling calculations discussed here shed light on the width of that zone. Within the next several years, NASA may obtain spectra of nearby transiting Earth-sized planets around M stars, using its James Webb Space Telescope. NASA hopes to build an even more capable space telescope to perform direct imaging of Earth-like exoplanets and take spectra of their atmospheres. Once data are obtained from either of these missions, correct interpretation of possible biomarker gases will become critical. We discuss here how those interpretations might be made.
We observed Venus with the Apache Point Observatory 3.5 m telescope TripleSpec spectrograph (R = 3500, λ = 0.96–2.47 µm) on 1–3 March 2009 and on 25, 27, and 30 November and 2–4 December 2010. With these observations and synthetic spectra generated with the Spectral Mapping and Atmospheric Radiative Transfer model, we produce the first simultaneous maps of cloud opacity, acid concentration, water vapor (H2O), hydrogen chloride (HCl), carbon dioxide (CO), carbonyl sulfide (OCS), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) abundances in the Venusian lower atmosphere.
Climate variability over the past million years shows a strong glacial‐interglacial cycle of ∼100,000 years as a combined result of Milankovitch orbital forcing and climatic resonance. It has been suggested that anthropogenic contributions to radiative forcing may extend the length of the present interglacial, but the effects of anthropogenic forcing on the periodicity of glacial‐interglacial cycles has received little attention. Here I demonstrate that moderate anthropogenic forcing can act to damp this 100,000 year cycle and reduce climate variability from orbital forcing. Future changes in solar insolation alone will continue to drive a 100,000 year climate cycle over the next million years, but the presence of anthropogenic warming can force the climate into an ice‐free state that only weakly responds to orbital forcing. Sufficiently strong anthropogenic forcing that eliminates the glacial‐interglacial cycle may serve as an indication of an epoch transition from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene.
The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) observed the distant Earth on three occasions in 2009. These data span a range of phase angles, including a rare crescent phase view. For each epoch, the satellite acquired near-infrared and mid-infrared full-disk images, and partial-disk spectra at 0.26-0.65 μm (λ/Δλ ~ 500) and 1.17-2.48 μm (λ/Δλ ~ 50). Spectra show strong absorption features due to water vapor and ozone, which is a biosignature gas. We perform a significant recalibration of the UV-visible spectra and provide the first comparison of high-resolution visible Earth spectra to the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory three-dimensional spectral Earth model. We find good agreement with the observations, reproducing the absolute brightness and dynamic range at all wavelengths for all observation epochs, thus validating the model to within the ~10% data calibration uncertainty.
We explore the impact of obliquity variations on planetary habitability in hypothetical systems with high mutual inclination. We show that large-amplitude, high-frequency obliquity oscillations on Earth-like exoplanets can suppress the ice-albedo feedback, increasing the outer edge of the habitable zone. We restricted our exploration to hypothetical systems consisting of a solar-mass star, an Earth-mass planet at 1 AU, and 1 or 2 larger planets. We verified that these systems are stable for 108 years with N-body simulations and calculated the obliquity variations induced by the orbital evolution of the Earth-mass planet and a torque from the host star. We ran a simplified energy balance model on the terrestrial planet to assess surface temperature and ice coverage on the planet’s surface, and we calculated differences in the outer edge of the habitable zone for planets with rapid obliquity variations. For each hypothetical system, we calculated the outer edge of habitability for two conditions: (1) the full evolution of the planetary spin and orbit and (2) the eccentricity and obliquity fixed at their average values. We recovered previous results that higher values of fixed obliquity and eccentricity expand the habitable zone, but we also found that obliquity oscillations further expand habitable orbits in all cases. Terrestrial planets near the outer edge of the habitable zone may be more likely to support life in systems that induce rapid obliquity oscillations as opposed to fixed-spin planets. Such planets may be the easiest to directly characterize with space-borne telescopes. Key Words: Exoplanets—Habitable zone—Energy balance models. Astrobiology 14, 277–291.
We present a new method to probe atmospheric pressure on Earth-like planets using (O2-O2) dimers in the near-infrared. We also show that dimer features could be the most readily detectable biosignatures for Earth-like atmospheres and may even be detectable in transit transmission with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The absorption by dimers changes more rapidly with pressure and density than that of monomers and can therefore provide additional information about atmospheric pressures.