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| Preface | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Past Thinking about Earth-Like Planets and Life | |
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| The Habitable Zone and the Importance of Liquid Water | |
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| Carl Sagan and the Drake Equation | |
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| Other Perspectives on Planetary Habitability: Rare Earth and Gaia | |
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| Our Habitable Planet Earth | |
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| Critical Updates on How Planets Are Built | |
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| The Conventional Wisdom regarding Planet Formation | |
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| Where Did Earth's Water Come From? | |
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| New Models for Planetary Accretion and Delivery of Water | |
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| Could Earth's Water Have Come from Comets? | |
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| An Up-to-Date Simulation of Planetary Accretion | |
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| Long-Term Climate Stability | |
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| Solar Evolution Theory | |
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| Solar Mass Loss? | |
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| Electromagnetic Radiation and the Greenhouse Effect | |
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| Planetary Energy Balance | |
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| The Faint Young Sun Problem | |
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| Possible Solutions to the Problem | |
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| The Carbonate-Silicate Cycle and Controls on Atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> | |
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| The CO<sub>2</sub>-Climate Feedback Loop | |
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| More Wrinkles in Earths Climate History | |
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| The Phanerozoic Climate Record | |
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| Precambrian Climate | |
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| Geologic Evidence for the Rise of Atmospheric O<sub>2</sub> | |
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| Cause of the O<sub>2</sub> Rise: Cyanobacteria | |
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| Methane, Methanogens, and the Universal Tree of Life | |
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| The Archean Methane Greenhouse | |
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| The Paleoproterozoic Glaciation | |
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| Runaway Glaciation and "Snowball Earth" | |
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| Milankovitch Cycles and the Recent Ice Ages | |
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| Ice Albedo Feedback and Climatic Instability | |
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| Evidence for Low-Latitude Glaciation | |
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| Mechanisms for Explaining Low-Latitude Glaciation | |
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| Snowball Earth | |
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| Limits to Planetary Habitability | |
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| Runaway Greenhouses and the Evolution of Venus' Atmosphere | |
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| The History of Water on Venus | |
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| The Classical Runaway Greenhouse Effect | |
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| An Alternative Runaway Greenhouse Model | |
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| Evolution of Venus' Atmosphere | |
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| The Future Evolution of Earth | |
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| High-CO<sub>2</sub> Atmospheres and Temperature Limits for Life | |
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| Future Solar Evolution and Lifetime of the Biosphere | |
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| A Geoengineering Solution to Solar Luminosity Increases | |
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| The Martian Climate Puzzle | |
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| Evidence for Liquid Water near Mars' Surface | |
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| CH<sub>4</sub> in Mars' Atmosphere? | |
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| Evidence That Water Flowed in Mars' Distant Past | |
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| When Did the Martian Valleys Form? | |
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| How Warm Was Early Mars? | |
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| Mechanisms for Warming Early Mars | |
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| Where Are the Carbonates? | |
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| Is the Earth Rare? | |
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| Planetary Size / Magnetic Fields | |
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| Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation | |
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| Availability of Nitrogen and the Importance of N<sub>2</sub> | |
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| Is Plate Tectonics Common? | |
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| A Planets Impact Environment | |
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| Stabilization of Earth's Obliquity by the Moon | |
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| Habitable Zones around Stars | |
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| Historical Attempts to Define the Habitable Zone | |
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| A More Modern Model for the Habitable Zone around the Sun | |
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| Hertzsprung-Russell Diagrams and Main Sequence Stars | |
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| Habitable Zones around Other Stars | |
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| Problems for Planets Orbiting Early-Type Stars | |
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| Problems for Planets Orbiting Late-Type Stars | |
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| Further Extensions of the Habitable Zone Concept | |
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| The Galactic Habitable Zone | |
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| How to Find Another Earth | |
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| Indirect Detection of Planets around Other Stars | |
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| Barnard's Star | |
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| The Astrometric Method | |
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| Pulsar Planets | |
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| The Doppler Effect | |
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| The Radial Velocity Method | |
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| Gravitational Microlensing | |
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| Finding and Characterizing Planets by Using Transits | |
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| Transits of Mercury and Venus | |
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| Transits of Extrasolar "Hot Jupiters" | |
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| Space-Based Transit Searches: CoRoT and Kepler | |
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| Observing Exoplanet Atmospheres during Transits | |
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| Secondary Transit Spectroscopy | |
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| Characterizing Earth-Like Planets around M Stars | |
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| Direct Detection of Extrasolar Planets | |
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| What Wavelength Region Should We Choose? | |
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| Infrared Interferometers: TPF-I and Darwin | |
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| Searching for Planets at Visible Wavelengths: TPF-C | |
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| The Visible Occulter: TPF-O | |
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| Nearby Target Stars | |
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| The Spectroscopic Search for Life | |
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| Spectral Resolution | |
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| The Visible/Near-IR Region: TPF-C or -O | |
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| The Thermal-IR Region: TPF-I or Darwin | |
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| Looking for Life on Early Earth-Type Planets | |
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| Possible False Positives for Life | |
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| Polarization Measurements: Looking for the Glint of Surface Water | |
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| The Holy Grail: Simultaneous Detection of O<sub>2</sub> and Reduced Gases | |
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| Prospects for the More Distant Future | |
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| NASA's Life Finder Mission | |
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| Using the Sun as a Gravitational Lens | |
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| The Drake Equation Revisited: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence | |
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| Notes | |
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| Index | |