Examining Earth as an Exoplanet and the Search for Life Beyond

Join this one-hour live webinar featuring Dr. Amber Young, a Pathways Research Assistant in the Planetary Systems Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, as she explores how Earth serves as a model for understanding exoplanets and the search for life beyond our solar system. Discover how astrobiologists use climate and photochemical modeling tools to analyze terrestrial planet atmospheres and identify signatures that could indicate the presence of life. Learn about the characterization and detectability of known biosignature gases such as oxygen and methane, and explore chemical disequilibrium signatures through atmospheric modeling and retrieval analysis techniques. Examine the development of observational strategies for characterizing potentially habitable exoplanets using observational decision tree frameworks applicable to future direct imaging missions. Participate in this interactive NASA Astrobiology Program session where Dr. Young responds to live YouTube comments and questions from the public, providing insights into cutting-edge astrobiology research and the methodologies used to search for life in the universe. Gain understanding of how scientists study Earth as an analog for exoplanets and the technological approaches being developed to detect biosignatures on distant worlds.