The Search for Living Worlds and the Connection to Our Cosmic Origins Contact person: Prof Martin Barstow Address: Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leicester, UK Email:
[email protected] Telephone: +44 116 252 3492 Imaging Earth 2.0. Simulation of the inner solar system viewed at visible wavelengths from a distance of 13 parsec with a LUVOIR telescope. The enormous glare from the central star has been suppressed with a coronagraph so the faint planets can be seen. The atmosphere of each planet can be probed with spectra to reveal its composition. Credit: L. Pueyo, M M. N’Diaye (STScI)/A. Roberge (NASA GSFC). The Search for Living Worlds – ESA Voyage 2050 White Paper Executive summary One of the most exciting scientific challenges is to detect Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of other stars in the galaxy and search for evidence of life. During the past 20 years the detection of exoplanets, orbiting stars beyond our own has moved from science fiction to science fact. From the first handful of gas giants, found through radial velocity studies, detection techniques have increased in sensitivity, finding smaller planets and diverse multi-planet systems. Through enhanced ground-based spectroscopic observations, transit detection techniques and the enormous productivity of the Kepler space mission, the number of confirmed planets has increased to more than 2000. There are several space missions, such as TESS (NASA), now operational, and PLATO (ESA), which will extend the parameter space for exoplanet discovery towards the regime of rocky earth- like planets and take the census of such bodies in the neighbourhood of the Solar System.