New and upcoming space and ground-based facilities aim to deliver the first true measurements of biosignautres on rocky habitable zone planets. Recent studies have concluded JWST should be able to detect certain biosignatures such as CO2 and CH4 under the right exoplanet atmospheric conditions, but key biosignatures such as O2 will not be detectable. The collecting area, sensitivity, and wavelength coverage afforded by the Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) make them the perfect platform to complement observations with space telescopes and can significantly increase our ability to detect biosignatures well before the Habitable Worlds Observatory comes online. We developed Bioverse, an open-source modular framework to simulate surveys, test hypotheses, and perform trade studies to assess the capabilities of upcoming and future facilities to detect exoplanet features such as biosignatures and address population-level questions. Our recent Bioverse simulations with the ELTs go beyond previous studies and account for constraints such as planet occurrence rates, relative system velocities, and target observability. I will present results from our new simulations, which predict whether or not Earth-like levels of O2 could be probed on Earth-sized exoplanets within 20 pc of the Sun, including the TRAPPIST-1 system. Bioverse, and the new capabilities added by our project, now enables realistic, systematic assessment of which hypotheses about habitable exoplanet atmospheres will be testable by joint constraints from the ELTs and new space facilities.

Host: Rachel Fernandes

Seminar held in 538 Davey or please email CEHW-SEMINAR-QUESTIONS@lists.psu.edu to attend virtually.