Origin and Evolution of Life on Terrestrial Planets
Journal article, 2010
The ultimate goal of terrestrial planet-finding missions is not only to discover terrestrial exoplanets inside the habitable zone (HZ) of their host stars but also to address the major question as to whether life may have evolved on a habitable Earth-like exoplanet outside our Solar System. We note that the chemical evolution that finally led to the origin of life on Earth must be studied if we hope to understand the principles of how life might evolve on other terrestrial planets in the Universe. This is not just an anthropocentric point of view: the basic ingredients of terrestrial life, that is, reduced carbon-based molecules and liquid H2O, have very specific properties. We discuss the origin of life from the chemical evolution of its precursors to the earliest life-forms and the biological implications of the stellar radiation and energetic particle environments. Likewise, the study of the biological evolution that has generated the various life-forms on Earth provides clues toward the understanding of the interconnectedness of life with its environment.
earth-like planets
sediments
ultraviolet-radiation
Origin of life
stars
Organic molecules
permafrost
galactic habitable zone
bacteria
Radiation
Astrobiology
amino-acids
biosphere
hydrothermal vents
Author
A. Brack
CBM Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire
G. Horneck
Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- Und Raumfahrt
C. S. Cockell
Open University
A. Berces
Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science Hungarian Academy of Sciences
N. K. Belisheva
Russian Academy of Sciences
C. Eiroa
Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
T. Henning
Max Planck Institut fur Astronomie
T. Herbst
Max Planck Institut fur Astronomie
L. Kaltenegger
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
A. Leger
Universite Paris-Sud XI
René Liseau
Chalmers, Department of Radio and Space Science, Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics
H. Lammer
Institut fur Weltraumforschung
F. Selsis
Universite de Bordeaux
C. Beichman
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
W. Danchi
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
M. Fridlund
ESTEC - European Space Research and Technology Centre
J. Lunine
University of Arizona
F. Paresce
Istituto Nazionale Di Astrofisica, Rome
A. Penny
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
A. Quirrenbach
Landessternwarte Heidelberg
H. Rottgering
Leiden Observatory Research Institute
J. Schneider
Observatoire de Paris-Meudon
D. Stam
SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research
G. Tinetti
UCL
G. J. White
Open University
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Astrobiology
1531-1074 (ISSN)
Vol. 10 1 69-76Subject Categories (SSIF 2011)
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Roots
Basic sciences
DOI
10.1089/ast.2009.0374