Getting to Know the Neighborhood: Who Can See Earth Transit?
Out of all the stars around us, which ones would be able to find Earth with the transit method? Today’s paper makes a list, which can help us with future SETI efforts!
Fluorescent Worlds: Searching for Life’s Glow
New research by astronomers at Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute uncovers a novel way to search for the existence of life in the Universe. Flares from red dwarf stars, commonly believed to pose serious problems for habitability, might actually expose hidden biospheres through the process of biofluorescence.
Modeling Limitless Skies
For life as we know it, atmospheric composition plays a huge part in planetary habitability. Today we explore a theoretical framework for characterizing and predicting planetary atmospheres, and how that framework can help in the search for Earth-like life on planets beyond our own.
Could we detect signs of life on a massive super-Earth?
We have one canonical idea of what life looks like on Earth: nitrogen, water, carbon dioxide. But would this be true on another world? When looking for life in the atmospheres of exoplanets, we might want to consider searching for something completely different.
Exomoons disguised as aliens
Exoplanets with moons could mimic alien life-signs.
It’s the End of the World as We Know It: Biosignatures from the Dying Earth
This paper asks what the biosphere of the Earth will look like billions of years from now, when the era of life is ending. What biosignatures might we detect from a dying planet?