Concepts about where life could exist and how it might be recognised: the habitable zone, the Rare Earth hypothesis, biosignatures, extremophiles and panspermia. A concept belongs here when its cited article defines one of these astrobiology ideas. Members are placed here from their own cited Wikipedia articles, each with a verbatim supporting quotation, so a reader can check why an entry sits in this group. The grouping forms part of the browse path for this section of the atlas.
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Habitability and the Detection of Life
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Habitable zone (Wikipedia)
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In astronomy and astrobiology, the habitable zone (HZ), also known as the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), or as the Goldilocks zone, is the range of orbits around a star within which a planetary surface could potentially support liquid water.
Panspermia (Wikipedia)
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Panspermia (from Ancient Greek πᾶν (pan) 'all' and σπέρμα (sperma) 'seed') is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the universe, distributed by cosmic dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacecraft carrying unintended contamination by microorganisms, known as directed panspermia.
Rare Earth hypothesis (Wikipedia)
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In planetary astronomy and astrobiology, the Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the origin of life and the evolution of biological complexity, such as sexually reproducing, multicellular organisms on Earth, and subsequently human intelligence, required an improbable combination of astrophysical and geological events and circumstances.
Biosignature (Wikipedia)
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A biosignature is a phenomenon that can be explained by biological processes where all possible abiotic causes of this phenomenon have been eliminated.
Extremophile (Wikipedia)
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An extremophile (from Latin extremus 'extreme' and Ancient Greek φιλία (philía) 'love') is an organism that is able to live or even thrive in extreme environments, such as extreme temperature (hot or cold), pressure, radiation, salinity, or pH level.
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