ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Requirements and limits for life in the context of exoplanets.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Predicting the diversity of photosynthetic light-harvesting using thermodynamics and machine learning.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Characterization of prokaryotic communities from Italian super-heated fumaroles.Extremophiles : life under extreme conditions · 2024Article
- Microbial Life in Playa-Lake Sediments: Adapted Structure, Plastic Function to Extreme Water Activity Variations.Microbial ecology · 2024Article
- Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems.Interface focus · 2024Review
- Optimizing photosynthetic light-harvesting under stars: simple and general antenna models.Photosynthesis research · 2024Article
- Feasibility of keeping Mars warm with nanoparticles.Science advances · 2024Article
- Heat tolerance inPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Clearing the air: unraveling past and guiding future research in atmospheric chemosynthesis.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2023Review
- Detection of intact amino acids with a hypervelocity ice grain impact mass spectrometer.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Magnetic Properties and Magnetocaloric Effect of Polycrystalline and Nano-Manganites PrNanomaterials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- 'All About' Extremophiles.Faculty reviews · 2023Review
- Inoculation with extreme endophytes improves performance and nutritional quality in crop species grown under exoplanetary conditions.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- The waterbodies of the halo-volcanic Dallol complex: earth analogs to guide us, where to look for life in the universe.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Editorial: Revisiting the limits of plant life - plant adaptations to extreme terrestrial environments relating to astrobiology and space biology.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Earliest Photic Zone Niches Probed by Ancestral Microbial Rhodopsins.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
- Metals Are Integral to Life as We Know It.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2022Article
- The spatial distribution and biogeochemical drivers of nitrogen cycle genes in an Antarctic desert.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Evaluating Alternatives to Water as Solvents for Life: The Example of Sulfuric Acid.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The requirements for life on Earth, its elemental composition, and its environmental limits provide a way to assess the habitability of exoplanets. Temperature is key both because of its influence on liquid water and because it can be directly estimated from orbital and climate models of exoplanetary systems. Life can grow and reproduce at temperatures as low as -15 °C, and as high as 122 °C. Studies of life in extreme deserts show that on a dry world, even a small amount of rain, fog, snow, and even atmospheric humidity can be adequate for photosynthetic production producing a small but detectable microbial community. Life is able to use light at levels less than 10(-5) of the solar flux at Earth. UV or ionizing radiation can be tolerated by many microorganisms at very high levels and is unlikely to be life limiting on an exoplanet. Biologically available nitrogen may limit habitability. Levels of O2 over a few percent on an exoplanet would be consistent with the presence of multicellular organisms and high levels of O2 on Earth-like worlds indicate oxygenic photosynthesis. Other factors such as pH and salinity are likely to vary and not limit life over an entire planet or moon.
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