We are pleased to announce CLEVER Planets (the Cycling of Life-Essential Volatile Elements on Rocky Planets), a research project investigating the necessary chemistry for a rocky planet to host life. The project is funded by an almost $8-million grant from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate to be a part of the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS).
Research for the team project will be accomplished by Principle Investigator Rajdeep Dasgupta (Rice University) and eleven other co-investigators from around the world (Rice, NASA’s Johnson Space Center, UCLA, UC-Davis, UC-Boulder), and many more collaborators at a myriad of institutions around the world, all representing various disciplines from astronomy to astrobiology to planetary dynamics and geology. We invite you to visit our Team page to learn more about us.
To determine what necessary materials a planet requires, or Life’s “recipes” as Dasgupta calls them, the scientists are investigating five main aspects of the stages from rocky planets’ formation to the complexation and evolution of organic material that makes up life. The work plans to build off what we know and can learn from our own solar system to better understand the possibility of biology on exoplanets. “We know more about our own solar system than any other,” Dasgupta said, in Rice University’s press release unveiling the grant. “That’s very useful for comparative planetology, but the focus of our search is beyond our own back yard. We want to construct and constrain as many possible pathways to rocky planet habitability as we can.” The five research themes are broken down and discussed further in the Research pages of this site.
Our research progress will be regularly updated through the Publications page, and we will continue to report news, workshops, conferences, outreach events and other exciting ways to interact with the scientists, particularly for those local to the Houston, Texas area. All updates will be posted on our News & Media and Events pages, respectively, and on our official Twitter account (@CLEVER_Planets).
Additionally, many of the investigators have open positions. If interested, learn more on the Open Positions page, or email an investigator.
The extent of the questions being asked are almost literally as immense as space, so this is just the beginning of CLEVER Planets.