RII Track-4:NSF: Assessing the Impact of Jovian Planets on the Existence of Potentially Habitable Planets

In our Solar System, Jupiter and Saturn are believed to have played a significant role in the formation and evolution of the terrestrial planets, and possibly even for the habitability of Earth. Yet the extent to which this is the case is highly uncertain, limiting astronomers’ understanding of whether giant planets affect the habitability of potentially Earth-like planets around other stars.

This fellowship will establish a collaboration between the PI and the primary research collaborator at the University of California Riverside to address this question. The project will lead to an unprecedentedly detailed understanding of planetary system architectures, and will shed new light on the evolution and gravitational interactions of Jupiter-like planets with other planets in their systems, including their effects on Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone.

This collaboration will benefit the PI’s research program by expanding her and the trainee’s skill sets, and providing them with access to one of the largest telescopes in the world. Beyond the award period, the research performed during the fellowship will position the PI to become a key contributor to the development of the next-generation space observatory, which was identified by the National Academy of Sciences as a high priority facility for astronomy in the next decade.

This observatory’s primary objective will be to achieve one of humanity’s biggest dreams: finding life on another planet.

This Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-4 EPSCoR Research Fellows project would provide a fellowship to an Assistant Professor and training for a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New Mexico. This work will be conducted in collaboration with researchers at the University of California Riverside. The over-arching theme of the proposed research program is a detailed assessment of how giant planets shape habitable environments through their formation and dynamical interactions with the inner parts of the planetary system where potentially habitable planets may reside.

Specifically, the goals are to determine the properties of the nearest Sun-like main sequence stars and refine their habitable zone boundaries; determine whether potentially habitable planets are (or could be) present in those systems; and constrain the dynamical interactions and long-term stability of potentially habitable planets in those systems through numerical simulations. The host site is the University of California Riverside.

The PI will work with Stephen Kane, who is the primary research collaborator, to reach these goals through extended visits to the host site. Through this collaboration, the PI and a postdoctoral researcher trainee will: gain expertise in the analysis of spectroscopic observations from the primary collaborator and his research group; obtain access to Keck telescope observations through the host site’s institutional access; and acquire skills in orbital dynamics and running dynamical simulations of exoplanetary systems from the primary collaborator.

The results of this fellowship will inform the observing strategy and interpretation of observations for the Habitable Worlds Observatory, whose main goal will be to directly image Earth-like exoplanets and characterize their atmosphere.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.