Seeding Life on Habitable Planets: the next frontier

Two of the great quests of humankind are the hunt for habitable planets and the search for the signatures of life beyond planet Earth. We have now discovered more than 5,600 planets orbiting other stars, the so-called exoplanets. Of these, 29 have a similar size to Earth and also orbit their host star in the habitable zone, a temperate region where liquid water may be able to survive on the planet surface. However, a planet's presence within this temperate zone is only one of several criteria that determines whether or not a planet is truly habitable. So far, we know of only one place in the universe where life has begun and thrived, planet Earth. It is still not well understood why the Earth is seemingly the only planet in the Solar System where life has flourished, especially because our neighbour, Venus, also orbits within the temperate region around the Sun, yet has an atmosphere and surface that is not friendly for life. Rocky planets like the Earth and Venus are formed from cataclysmic collisions of moon-sized bodies, the energy from which would have created a molten, hot surface from which volatiles, such as water, would have boiled away to space.
So what happened to make the Earth friendly for life? One theory, supported by the enhancement of heavy isotopes in the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, is that impacts from comets, icy leftovers from the formation of the Solar System, delivered a substantial volume of water and life-friendly (carbon-rich) ingredients to the surface of the young Earth when the crust cooled and solidified. This replenished the planet with the ingredients needed for life to begin. However, this then raises questions on the role of comets in seeding *all* potentially habitable planets with life-friendly ingredients. Are cometary impacts a vital process in the formation of a habitable planet? If so, are comets that are formed around other stars also carriers of carbon-rich and life-friendly material?
This research will scrutinise the criteria needed for habitability by investigating the role of comets in seeding life on *all* potentially habitable planets, using state-of-the-art computational chemical and climate models, to contrast with state-of-the-art observations of comets and exo-comet forming regions around other stars. My team and I will determine i) whether or not the comet-building material in exoplanet-forming systems are universal carriers of organic-rich material needed to seed life, and ii) whether or not cometary impacts on the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets are an observable phenomenon. The outputs from this research will provide strong constraints on the commonality of habitable planets, and provide a suite of diagnostics to search for evidence of cometary impacts using next generation telescopes that will target potentially habitable exoplanets. This research will revise the definition of "habitability" and will provide atmospheric diagnostics of habitability beyond the already proposed biosignatures.