Bioverse and Mapping Science Cases for Exoplanet Surveys in the next Decades
When
Where
Dr. Daniel Apai
Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences
Astronomer, Steward Observatory
University of Arizona
The next two decades will see an exciting wave of increasingly capable exoplanet missions, new instruments, and astrobiology-motivated exoplanet surveys. In this talk, I will present Bioverse, a uniquely comprehensive exoplanet survey simulation and hypothesis testing framework. Bioverse is a key result of the NASA Astrobiology-funded Alien Earths team’s work at The University of Arizona. Bioverse is capable of assessing the scientific diagnostic power of exoplanet surveys and informs mission and survey trade studies. I will demonstrate its functionality for transiting and direct imaging surveys from ground-based telescopes (GMT, TMT, ELT, LFAST) and space-based missions (e.g., PLATO, LUVOIR, HWO, Nautilus, LIFE). I will explore what questions can be answered and show how surveys can be designed to test hypotheses about the atmospheric evolution of habitable worlds, the existence of the habitable zone, discontinuities in the exoplanet population, and the origins of life.