English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Chemical disequilibrium quantified via available free energy has previouslybeen proposed as a potential biosignature. However, exoplanet biosignatureremote sensing work has not yet investigated how observational uncertaintiesimpact the ability to infer a life-generated available free energy. We pair anatmospheric retrieval tool to a thermodynamics model to assess thedetectability of chemical disequilibrium signatures of Earth-like exoplanets,emphasizing the Proterozoic Eon where atmospheric abundances of oxygen-methanedisequilibrium pairs may have been relatively high. Retrieval model studiesapplied across a range of gas abundances revealed that order-of-magnitudeconstraints on disequilibrium energy are achieved with simulatedreflected-light observations at the high abundance scenario and signal-to-noiseratios (50) while weak constraints are found at moderate SNRs (20\,--\,30) formed\,--\,low abundance cases. Furthermore, the disequilibrium energyconstraints are improved by modest thermal information encoded in water vaporopacities at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. These results highlight howremotely detecting chemical disequilibrium biosignatures can be a useful andmetabolism-agnostic approach to biosignature detection.

Inferring Chemical Disequilibrium Biosignatures for Proterozoic Earth-Like Exoplanets