An exploration of origin of life for exoplanetary science
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1.
Brown University
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2.
Jet Propulsion Lab
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3.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
The factors that enable life to begin define the difference between an inhabited planet and one that is simply habitable. While used extensively in Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023–2032 (abbreviated "OWL" in this paper), the term origin of life is never mentioned in Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s (notated as "Astro2020" in this paper). While the chapters on the search for life in the solar system in OWL treat the origin of life as a central concept, the exoplanet focused chapters of the OWL and Astro2020 reports mostly do not mention origin of life science, particularly with respect to how it intersects with biosignature identification and interpretation. To begin to fill this gap, we describe the set of conditions that are required for life to begin and suggest that they may be distinct from those that make an environment habitable. Finally, we present a putative list of origin of life processes that may be observable on exoplanets and outline the relevance of future planetary science and astrophysics missions to this topic. Given the complexity of detecting these conditions beyond the solar system, we argue that while looking for signs of the origin of life on exoplanets could be fruitful in determining which are worthy of further study, the concept is likely more appropriate for distinguishing true biosignatures from false positives. Ensuring that future facilities like the Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE) and the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) can constrain origin of life conditions is necessary for life detection searches beyond the solar system.
Copyright and License
© 2025 Keller, Kataria, Barge, Chen, Yung and Weber. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Acknowledgement
This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA (80NM0018D004). Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not constitute or imply its endorsement by the United States Government or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged. 2024. All rights reserved.
Funding
The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The authors acknowledge funding from the JPL Strategic Research and Technology Development, “Assessing Origin of Life (OOL) Scenarios for Exoplanet Studies.”
Contributions
FK: Writing–original draft, Writing–review and editing. TK: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Writing–original draft, Writing–review and editing. LB: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Writing–original draft, Writing–review and editing. PC: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Writing–original draft, Writing–review and editing. YY: Writing–original draft, Writing–review and editing. JW: Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing–original draft, Writing–review and editing.
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Additional details
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- JPL Strategic Research and Technology Development -
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NM0018D004
- Accepted
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2025-02-25
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)
- Publication Status
- Published