Diving into Exoplanets: Are Water Seas the Most Common?

@article{Ballesteros2019DivingIE,
  title={Diving into Exoplanets: Are Water Seas the Most Common?},
  author={Fernando J Ballesteros and Alberto Fern{\'a}ndez-Soto and V. J. Mart{\'i}nez},
  journal={Astrobiology},
  year={2019},
  volume={19 5},
  pages={
          642-654
        }
}
One of the basic tenets of exobiology is the need for a liquid substratum in which life can arise, evolve, and develop. The most common version of this idea involves the necessity of water to act as such a substratum, both because that is the case on Earth and because it seems to be the most viable liquid for chemical reactions that lead to life. Other liquid media that could harbor life, however, have occasionally been put forth. In this work, we investigate the relative probability of finding… 
View on PubMed
digital.csic.es
30 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
1
Background Citations
5

Figures and Tables from this paper

30 Citations

On the Habitable Lifetime of Terrestrial Worlds with High Radionuclide Abundances
The presence of a liquid solvent is widely regarded as an essential prerequisite for habitability. We investigate the conditions under which worlds outside the habitable zones of stars are capable of…
Phosphine on Venus Cannot Be Explained by Conventional Processes.
TLDR
This work thoroughly explores the potential pathways of formation of phosphine in a venusian environment, including in the planet's atmosphere, cloud and haze layers, surface, and subsurface, and provides a template for investigation of phosphines as a biosignature on other worlds.
Theoretical Constraints Imposed by Gradient Detection and Dispersal on Microbial Size in Astrobiological Environments.
TLDR
The connections between information acquisition, motility, and microbial size are explored from an explicitly astrobiological standpoint and the constraints on organism size imposed by gradient detection and motility are elucidated in the form of simple heuristic scaling relations.
Organic Carbon Cycle in the Atmosphere of Venus
The community commonly assumes that the Venusian atmosphere lacks organic (reduced) carbon. This is reflected in the literature, which now for almost a half a century does not mention organic carbon…
Evaluating Alternatives to Water as Solvents for Life: The Example of Sulfuric Acid
TLDR
Analysis of meteoritic chemicals and possible abiotic synthetic paths suggests that postulated paths to the origin of life on Earth are unlikely to operate in CSA, but sufficient chemical structural and functional diversity may be available among those stable chemicals for life that uses concentrated sulfuric acid as a solvent to be plausible.
On the Potential of Silicon as a Building Block for Life
TLDR
It is found that in a water-rich environment silicon’s chemical capacity is highly limited due to ubiquitous silica formation; silicon can likely only be used as a rare and specialized heteroatom.
Partitioning of amino acids and proteins into decanol using phase transfer agents towards understanding life in non-polar liquids
TLDR
The results show that most terrestrial biological molecules are not compatible with non-polar solvents, but it is possible to find and perhaps evolve polymers that are functional in such phases.
Plate Section (PDF Only)
  • Engineering
    Life in Extreme Environments
  • 2020
Index
  • Life in Extreme Environments
  • 2020
Introduction
...
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 81 REFERENCES
Tables of Rosseland mean opacities for candidate atmospheres of life hosting free-floating planets
The existence of life on a free-floating planet is conditioned by the existence of an optically thick atmosphere. This may ensure the long-term thermal stability of a (liquid) solvent on the surface…
The habitability of super-Earths in Gliese 581
Aims. The planetary system around the M star Gliese 581 consists of a hot Neptune (Gl 581b) and two super-Earths (Gl 581c and Gl 581d). The habitability of this system with respect to the…
Habitable zones around main sequence stars.
TLDR
The results suggest that mid-to-early K stars should be considered along with G stars as optimal candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life.
TOWARD THE MINIMUM INNER EDGE DISTANCE OF THE HABITABLE ZONE
We explore the minimum distance from a host star where an exoplanet could potentially be habitable in order not to discard close-in rocky exoplanets for follow-up observations. We find that the inner…
WATER-TRAPPED WORLDS
Although tidally locked habitable planets orbiting nearby M-dwarf stars are among the best astronomical targets to search for extrasolar life, they may also be deficient in volatiles and water.…
The Habitable Zone of Earth-like Planets with Different Levels of Atmospheric Pressure
As a contribution to the study of the habitability of extrasolar planets, we implemented a one-dimensional energy balance model (EBM), the simplest seasonal model of planetary climate, with new…
On the structural law of exoplanetary systems
The major semiaxes of the planets in our Solar system obey a simple geometric progression known as the Titius-Bode law, whose physical origin remains disputed. It was recently shown that the five…
The carbonate-silicate cycle and CO2/climate feedbacks on tidally locked terrestrial planets.
TLDR
It is found that the substellar point's location relative to the continents is an important factor in determining weathering and the equilibrium atmospheric CO(2) level.
Exoplanet predictions based on the generalized Titius–Bode relation
We evaluate the extent to which newly detected exoplanetary systems containing at least four planets adhere to a generalized Titius–Bode (TB) relation. We find that the majority of exoplanet systems…
Sub-brown dwarfs as seats of life based on non-polar solvents: Thermodynamic restrictions
...
...