Publication Abstracts
Sanromá et al. 2013
Sanromá, E., E. Pallé, M.N. Parenteau, , A.M. Gutíerrez-Navarro, R. Lopez, and P. Montañés-Rodríguez, 2013: Characterizing the purple Earth: Modelling the globally-integrated spectral variability of the Archean Earth. Astrophys. J., 780, 52, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/780/1/52.
Ongoing searches for exoplanetary systems have revealed a wealth of planets with diverse physical properties. Planets even smaller than the Earth have already been detected and the efforts of future missions are aimed at the discovery, and perhaps characterization, of small rocky exoplanets within the habitable zone of their stars. Clearly, what we know about our planet will be our guideline for the characterization of such planets. However, the Earth has been inhabited for at least 3.8 Gyr and its appearance has changed with time. Here, we have studied the Earth during the Archean eon, 3.0 Gyr ago. At that time, one of the more widespread life forms on the planet was purple bacteria. These bacteria are photosynthetic microorganisms and can inhabit both aquatic and terrestrial environments. Here, we use a radiative transfer model to simulate the visible and near-infrared radiation reflected by our planet, taking into account several scenarios regarding the possible distribution of purple bacteria over continents and oceans. We find that purple bacteria have a reflectance spectrum that has a strong reflectivity increase, similar to the red edge of leafy plants, although shifted redward. This feature produces a detectable signal in the disk-averaged spectra of our planet, depending on cloud amount and purple bacteria concentration/distribution. We conclude that by using multi-color photometric observations, it is possible to distinguish between an Archean Earth in which purple bacteria inhabit vast extensions of the planet and a present-day Earth with continents covered by deserts, vegetation, or microbial mats.
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BibTeX Citation
@article{sa08200k,
author={Sanromá, E. and Pallé, E. and Parenteau, M. N. and Kiang, N. Y. and Gutíerrez-Navarro, A. M. and Lopez, R. and Montañés-Rodríguez, P.},
title={Characterizing the purple Earth: Modelling the globally-integrated spectral variability of the Archean Earth},
year={2013},
journal={Astrophysical Journal},
volume={780},
pages={52},
doi={10.1088/0004-637X/780/1/52},
}
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RIS Citation
TY - JOUR ID - sa08200k AU - Sanromá, E. AU - Pallé, E. AU - Parenteau, M. N. AU - Kiang, N. Y. AU - Gutíerrez-Navarro, A. M. AU - Lopez, R. AU - Montañés-Rodríguez, P. PY - 2013 TI - Characterizing the purple Earth: Modelling the globally-integrated spectral variability of the Archean Earth JA - Astrophys. J. JO - Astrophysical Journal VL - 780 SP - 52 DO - 10.1088/0004-637X/780/1/52 ER -
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