2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
The viability of Earth-life on other planets
| Project/Area Number |
19K23459
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| Research Institution | Tokyo Institute of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
Smith Harrison 東京工業大学, 地球生命研究所, 研究員 (50843934)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-08-30 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | Astrobiology / Metabolism / Complex Systems / Software / Networks |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
I recently submitted a first author paper highlighting some current issues in Astrobiology research, and trying to determine if planets are inhabited or not. This work was done in collaboration with a collaborator at Arizona State University. This work will be presented at AbSciCon, and internationally renowned Astrobiology conference. This work extends my research to thinking about exoplanets, and the viable methodology which could be used to assess whether or not life can be reliably detected on such worlds. This work will hopefully help exoplanet astrobiologists better assess life detection methods.
We have been working on an additional network expansion package that can also be used to investigate research questions surrounding the origin and nature of life on early Earth, and early evolution of life. This development has been supporting another research project with collaborators at ELSI and MIT. The paper I published last year titled "Seeding Biochemistry on other worlds: Enceladus as a case study" has been getting attention from organizations that wish to market the research to the general public.
Work has continued on the BioXP and ecg software packages with help from collaborators at Arizona State University.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Now that I have been able to travel, things are progressing smoothly since I can share the most recent results with colleagues at the Astrobiology Science Conference in Atlanta, USA. The development of the network expansion software we are developing is also going well.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
I would like to begin new collaborations with colleagues across the globe in order to answer more questions about planetary viability for life, and in order to increase the user base of the important software that I developed. I would like to run more analyses, focusing on diverse microbial ecologies instead of simply individual organisms. I would like to network with colleagues and share results at workshops and conferences. I would like to publish results from more new collaborations and analyses.
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| Causes of Carryover |
I am spending my money next fiscal year on travel to present my research at the Astrobiology Science Conference in the USA. It is the largest astrobiology science conference in the world, and a place to make new collaborations and share my research ideas.
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[Presentation] (untitled)2022
Author(s)
Harrison Smith
Organizer
NAS Committee on Planetary Protection Meeting No. 4 on Planetary Protection for Missions to Small Bodies Astrobiology and Astrochemistry Contamination Concerns for Small Bodies Science
Int'l Joint Research / Invited
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