In a few years, space telescopes will investigate our Galaxy to detect evidence of life, mainly by observing rocky planets. In the last decade, the observation of exoplanet atmospheres and the theoretical works on biosignature gasses have experienced a considerable acceleration. The~most attractive feature of the realm of exoplanets is that 40\% of M dwarfs host super-Earths with a minimum mass between 1 and 30 Earth masses, orbital periods shorter than 50 days, and radii between those of the Earth and Neptune (1--3.8 R$_\oplus$). Moreover, the recent finding of cyanobacteria able to use far-red (FR) light for oxygenic photosynthesis due to the synthesis of chlorophylls $d$ and $f$, extending in vivo light absorption up to 750\ nm, suggests the possibility of exotic photosynthesis in planets around M dwarfs. Using innovative laboratory instrumentation, we exposed different cyanobacteria to an M dwarf star simulated irradiation, comparing their responses to those under solar and FR simulated lights.~As expected, in FR light, only the cyanobacteria able to synthesize chlorophyll $d$ and $f$ could grow. Surprisingly, all strains, both able or unable to use FR light, grew and photosynthesized under the M dwarf generated spectrum in a similar way to the solar light and much more efficiently than under the FR one. Our findings highlight the importance of simulating both the visible and FR light components of an M dwarf spectrum to correctly evaluate the photosynthetic performances of oxygenic organisms exposed under such an exotic light~condition.
Introduction: The search for life on distant exoplanets is expected to rely on atmospheric biosignatures detection, such as oxygen of biological origin. However, it is not demonstrated how much oxygenic photosynthesis, which on Earth depends on visible light, could work under spectral conditions simulating exoplanets orbiting the Habitable Zone of M-dwarf stars, which have low light emission in the visible and high light emission in the far-red/near-infrared. By utilizing cyanobacteria, the first organisms to evolve oxygenic photosynthesis on our planet, and a starlight simulator capable of ac…
An Agnostic Machine Learning Model of Photosynthetic Habitability
Digital Environment Research Institute (DERI)（数字环境研究研究所）；Queen Mary University of London（伦敦女王玛丽大学）；Department of Physics and Astronomy（物理与天文学系）；Franklin College of Arts and Sciences（法兰克林艺术与科学学院）；University of Georgia（佐治亚大学）；Institute of Agricultural Biology and Biotechnology（农业生物学与生物技术研究所）；National Research Council of Italy（意大利国家研究委员会）；Department of Chemistry（化学系）；Brandeis University（布兰迪大学）；Astronomy Unit（天文学单位）
In the search for life on other planets, the presence of photosynthetic vegetation may be detectable from the colors of light it reflects. On the modern Earth, this spectral reflectance is characterized by an increase in reflectance between the red and near-infrared wavelengths, a "red edge". On planets orbiting different stellar types, red edge analogs may occur at other colors than red. Thus, knowing the wavelengths at which photosynthetic organisms preferentially absorb and reflect photons is necessary to detect red edge analogs on other planets. Using a numerical model that predicts the ab…
On the Earth, photosynthetic organisms are responsible for the production of virtually all of the oxygen in the atmosphere. On the land, vegetation reflects in the visible, leading to a red edge that developed about 450 Myr ago and has been proposed as a biosignature for life on extrasolar planets. However, in many regions of the Earth, and particularly where surface conditions are extreme, for example in hot and cold deserts, photosynthetic organisms can be driven into and under substrates where light is still sufficient for photosynthesis. These communities exhibit no detectable surface spec…
Definition of habitability depends on the organisms under consideration. One way to determine habitability of some environment is to compare its certain parameters to environments where extremophilic micro-organisms thrive on Earth. We can also define more common habitability criteria from the life as we know it. These criteria include basic elements, liquid water and an energy source. We know that some locations in our Solar System provide at least some of these limits and criteria. This article describes the aims and technical specifications of some planetary missions, such as NASAs MSL in 2…
We apply a mathematical model for photosynthesis to quantitatively assess the habitability of a hypothetical planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, inside the so called habitability zone. Results suggest significant viability for primary biological productivity, provided living organisms have evolved to reach the ability of using infrared light for photosynthesis.
Aims: In 2010, detailed observations have been published that seem to indicate another super-Earth planet in the system of Gliese 581 located in the midst of the stellar climatological habitable zone. The mass of the planet, known as Gl 581g, has been estimated to be between 3.1 and 4.3 Earth masses. In this study, we investigate the habitability of Gl 581g based on a previously used concept that explores its long-term possibility of photosynthetic biomass production, which has already been used to gauge the principal possibility of life regarding the super-Earths Gl 581c and Gl 581d. Methods:…
Photosynthetic life requires sufficient photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) to metabolise. On Earth, plant behaviour, physiology and metabolism are sculpted around the night-day cycle by an endogenous biological circadian clock. The evolution of life was influenced by the Earth-Sun orbital dynamic, which generates the photo-environment incident on the planetary surface. In this work the unusual photo-environment of an Earth-like planet (ELP) in 3:2 spin orbit resonance is explored. Photo-environments on the ELP are longitudinally differentiated, in addition to differentiations relating t…
The potential for hosting photosynthetic life on Earth-like planets within binary/multiple stellar systems was evaluated by modelling the levels of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) such planets receive. Combinations of M and G stars in: (i) close-binary systems; (ii) wide-binary systems and (iii) three-star systems were investigated and a range of stable radiation environments found to be possible. These environmental conditions allow for the possibility of familiar, but also more exotic forms of photosynthetic life, such as infrared photosynthesisers and organisms specialised for spe…
Binaries could provide the best niches for life in the galaxy. Though counterintuitive, this assertion follows directly from stellar tidal interaction theory and the evolution of lower mass stars. There is strong evidence that chromospheric activity of rapidly rotating young stars may be high enough to cause mass loss from atmospheres of potentially habitable planets. The removal of atmospheric water is most critical. Tidal breaking in binaries could help reduce magnetic dynamo action and thereby chromospheric activity in favor of life. We call this the Binary Habitability Mechanism (BHM), tha…
Previous work on possible surface reflectance biosignatures for Earth-like planets has typically focused on analogues to spectral features produced by photosynthetic organisms on Earth, such as the vegetation red edge. Although oxygenic photosynthesis, facilitated by pigments evolved to capture photons, is the dominant metabolism on our planet, pigmentation has evolved for multiple purposes to adapt organisms to their environment. We present an interdisciplinary study of the diversity and detectability of nonphotosynthetic pigments as biosignatures, which includes a description of environments…
The discovery of potentially habitable planets around the ultracool dwarf star Trappist-1 naturally poses the question: could Trappist-1 planets be home to life? These planets orbit very close to the host star and are most susceptible to the UV radiation emitted by the intense and frequent flares of Trappist-1. Here we calculate the UV spectra (100 - 450 nm) of a superflare observed on Trappist-1 with the K2 mission. We couple radiative transfer models to this spectra to estimate the UV surface flux on planets in the habitable zone of Trappist-1 (planets $e$, $f$, and $g$), assuming atmospheri…
Context. Homochirality is a generic and unique property of life on Earth and is considered a universal and agnostic biosignature. Homochirality induces fractional circular polarization in the incident light that it reflects. Because this circularly polarized light can be sensed remotely, it can be one of the most compelling candidate biosignatures in life detection missions. While there are also other sources of circular polarization, these result in spectrally flat signals with lower magnitude. Additionally, circular polarization can be a valuable tool in Earth remote sensing because the circ…
Detecting alien living worlds and photosynthetic life using imaging polarimetry with the HWO coronagraph
IRSOL, Universitá Svizzera italiana（瑞士意大利大学）；University of Bern（伯尔尼大学）；SETI Institute（SETI研究所）；NASA（美国国家航空航天局）；ESO（欧洲南方天文台）；University of Central Florida（中佛罗里达大学）；Leiden Observatory, Leiden University（莱顿大学）；Technical University Delft（代尔夫特理工大学）
A habitable zone of a star is defined as a range of orbits within which a rocky planet can support liquid water on its surface. The most intriguing question driving the search for habitable planets is whether they host life. But is the age of the planet important for its habitability? If we define habitability as the ability of a planet to beget life, then probably not. After all, life on Earth has developed within only about 800 Myr after its formation. If, however, we define habitability as our ability to detect life on the surface of exoplanets, then age becomes a crucial parameter. Only af…
Biological molecules are characterized by an intrinsic asymmetry known as homochirality. The result is optical activity of biological materials and circular polarization in the light scattered by microorganisms, cells of living organisms, as well as molecules (e.g. amino acids) of biological origin. Lab measurements (Sparks et al. 2009a, b) have found that light scattered by certain biological systems, in particular photosynthetic organisms, is not only circular polarized but contains a characteristic spectral trend, showing a fast change and reversal of sign for circular polarization within a…
In a previous study published in Astrobiology, we focused on the evolution of habitability of a 10 M_E super-Earth planet orbiting a star akin to the Sun. This study was based on a concept of planetary habitability in accordance to the integrated system approach that describes the photosynthetic biomass production taking into account a variety of climatological, biogeochemical, and geodynamical processes. In the present study, we pursue a significant augmentation of our previous work by considering stars with zero-age main sequence masses between 0.5 and 2.0 M_sun with special emphasis on mode…
Since there are several ways planets can survive the giant phase of the host star, we examine the habitability and detection of planets orbiting white dwarfs. As a white dwarf cools from 6000 K to 4000 K, a planet orbiting at 0.01 AU would remain in the Continuous Habitable Zone (CHZ) for ~8 Gyr. We show that photosynthetic processes can be sustained on such planets. The DNA-weighted UV radiation dose for an Earth-like planet in the CHZ is less than the maxima encountered on Earth, hence non-magnetic white dwarfs are compatible with the persistence of complex life. Polarisation due to a terres…
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 all vital processes is directly affected by the ambient temperature. Multicellular poikilotherms are the most common and evolutionarily ancient form of complex life on earth. The thermal limits for their active metabolism and reproduction are bracketed by the temperature interval 0C<T<50C. The same interval applies to the photosynthetic production of oxygen, an essential ingredient…
The evolution of different forms of photosynthetic life has profoundly altered the activity level of the biosphere, radically reshaping the composition of Earth's oceans and atmosphere over time. However, the mechanistic impacts of a primitive photosynthetic biosphere on Earth's early atmospheric chemistry and climate are poorly understood. Here, we use a global redox balance model to explore the biogeochemical and climatological effects of different forms of primitive photosynthesis. We find that a hybrid ecosystem of H2-based and Fe-based anoxygenic photoautotrophs - organisms that perform p…
The circumstellar habitable zone and its various refinements serves as a useful entry point for discussing the potential for a planet to generate and sustain life. But little attention is paid to the quality of available energy in the form of stellar photons for phototrophic (e.g. photosynthetic) life. This short paper discusses the application of the concept of exergy to exoplanetary environments and the evaluation of the maximum efficiency of energy use, or maximum work obtainable from electromagnetic radiation. Hotter stars provide temperate planets with higher maximum obtainable work with …
Proxima Centauri b provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand the evolution and nature of terrestrial planets orbiting M dwarfs. Although Proxima Cen b orbits within its star's habitable zone, multiple plausible evolutionary paths could have generated different environments that may or may not be habitable. Here we use 1D coupled climate-photochemical models to generate self-consistent atmospheres for evolutionary scenarios predicted in our companion paper (Barnes et al., 2016). These include high-O2, high-CO2, and more Earth-like atmospheres, with either oxidizing or reducing composi…
Recognizing whether a planet can support life is a primary goal of future exoplanet spectral characterization missions, but past research on habitability assessment has largely ignored the vastly different conditions that have existed in our planet's long habitable history. This study presents simulations of a habitable yet dramatically different phase of Earth's history, when the atmosphere contained a Titan-like organic-rich haze. Prior work has claimed a haze-rich Archean Earth (3.8-2.5 billion years ago) would be frozen due to the haze's cooling effects. However, no previous studies have s…
We make a preliminary assessment on the habitability of potential rocky exoplanets around Alpha Centauri B. We use several indexes: the Earth Similarity Index, a mathematical model for photosynthesis, and a biological productivity model. Considering the atmospheres of the exoplanets similar to current Earth's atmosphere, we find consistent predictions of both the Earth Similarity Index and the biological productivity model. The mathematical model for photosynthesis clearly failed because does not consider the temperature explicitly. For the case of Alpha Centauri B, several simulation runs giv…
A planet's atmospheric constituents (e.g., O$_2$, O$_3$, H$_2$O$_v$, CO$_2$, CH$_4$, N$_2$O) can provide clues to its surface habitability, and may offer biosignature targets for remote life detection efforts. The plethora of rocky exoplanets found by recent transit surveys (e.g., the Kepler mission) indicates that potentially habitable systems orbiting K- and M-dwarf stars may have very different orbital and atmospheric characteristics than Earth. To assess the physical distribution and observational prospects of various biosignatures and habitability indicators, it is important to understand…
Kepler-96 is an active solar-type star harbouring a Super-Earth planet in close orbit. Its age of 2.3 Gyr is the same as the Sun when there was a considerable increase of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere due to micro-organisms living in the ocean. We present the analysis of superflares seen on the transit lightcurves of Kepler-96b. The model used here simulates the planetary transit in a flaring star. By fitting the observational data with this model, it is possible to infer the physical properties of the flares, such as their duration and the energy released. We found 3 flares within the energy r…
Aquatic photosynthesis plays a major role in carbon fixation and O$_2$ production on Earth. In this Letter, we analyze the prospects for oxygenic photosynthesis in aquatic environments on modern Earth-analogs around F-, G-, K- and M-type stars. Our analysis takes into account the spectral type of the host star, attenuation of light by aquatic organisms, and rates of respiration and photosynthesis. We study the compensation depth ($\mathcal{Z}_\mathrm{CO}$) and the critical depth ($\mathcal{Z}_\mathrm{CR}$), defined respectively as the locations where the net growth rates and vertically integra…
One of the possible signs of life on distant habitable exoplanets is the red-edge, which is a rise in the reflectivity of planets between visible and near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. Previous studies suggested the possibility that the red-edge position for habitable exoplanets around M-dwarfs may be shifted to a longer wavelength than that for Earth. We investigated plausible red-edge position in terms of the light environment during the course of the evolution of phototrophs. We show that phototrophs on M-dwarf habitable exoplanets may use visible light when they first evolve in the ocean and…
We review the latest findings on extra-solar planets and their potential to support Earth-like life. Focusing on planets orbiting Red Dwarf (RD) stars, the most abundant stellar type, we show that including RDs as potential host stars could increase the probability of finding biotic planets by a factor of up to a thousand, and reduce the estimate of the distance to our nearest biotic neighbor by up to 10. We argue that binary and multiple star systems need to be taken into account when discussing exoplanet habitability. Early considerations indicated that conditions on RD planets would be inim…
