Finding Signs of Life on Transiting Earthlike Planets: High-resolution Transmission Spectra of Earth through Time around FGKM Host Stars
Published in The Astrophysical Journal, 2020
The search for life in the universe mainly uses modern Earth as a template. However, we know that Earth’s atmospheric composition changed significantly through its geological evolution. Recent discoveries show that transiting, potentially Earth-like exoplanets orbit a wide range of host stars, which strongly influence their atmospheric composition and remotely detectable spectra. Thus, a database for transiting terrestrial exoplanet around different host stars at different geological times, is a crucial missing ingredient to support observational searches for signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres.
Recommended citation: Kaltenegger, Lisa and Lin, Zifan and Rugheimer, Sarah. (2020). "Finding Signs of Life on Transiting Earthlike Planets: High-resolution Transmission Spectra of Earth through Time around FGKM Host Stars." The Astrophysical Journal.
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