'oxygenic' photosynthesis tagged posts

Earth-like Biospheres on other Planets may be Rare

An artistic representation of the potentially habitable planet Kepler 422-b (left), compared with Earth (right).
Credit
Ph03nix1986 / Wikimedia Commons
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Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A new analysis of known exoplanets has revealed that Earth-like conditions on potentially habitable planets may be much rarer than previously thought. The work focuses on the conditions required for oxygen-based photosynthesis to develop on a planet, which would enable complex biospheres of the type found on Earth. The study is published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The number of confirmed planets in our own Milky Way galaxy now numbers into the thousands...

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