Early Earth, Mars and Venus as Exoplanets (EASE)

The era of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened a new chapter in exoplanetary research. We cannot understand exoplanets without looking back at the cradle of life as we know it - the Earth. Why did the Earth become a habitable planet? Why did Mars and Venus evolve differently? What would JWST see if it looked at the solar system planets as they were billions of years ago?

My team will investigate the long-term evolution of the atmospheres and spectral fingerprints of Earth, Venus, and Mars.I propose a unique joint evolutionary study of volcanism, atmospheric escape to space, and spectroscopy.

My team will use numerical models at the cutting edge of modern development and connect their outputs to the growing list of JWST spectra of exoplanets.

The team will model interior processes, the evolution of lower and upper atmospheres, and the evolving atmospheric spectra of Earth, Venus, and Mars and their possible exoplanetary analogues.

Our predictions of spectral features of these three planets at different evolutionary stages will be critical for the astrophysics community to identify potential habitable worlds outside the solar system, and forecast their future evolution.

My deep expertise in stellar and planetary evolution makes me uniquely well-placed to lead this project.This project will not only significantly expand our current knowledge of the evolution of the Earth, Venus, and Mars, but will also place much better constrains on the probability for a terrestrial planet to evolve into a habitable world.

The team will in particular characterize possible “failed” analogues of Earth and investigate if they could have become habitable planets under slightly different conditions.

By studying for the first time this unique combination of factors that are crucial for the evolution of Earth-like worlds, my project will break new ground in the study of exoplanetary habitability.