‘Alternative Earths’ project will include Yale researchers

Yale will share in a $50 million grant from the NASA Astrobiology Institute, aimed at using Earth’s evolution of ocean-atmosphere chemistry to search for habitable planets beyond our solar system.

The grant will be divided among seven institutions. Yale’s portion is roughly $2 million.

Noah Planavsky, assistant professor of geology and geophysics, will lead a working group at Yale that includes Dave Evans, Jun Korenaga, and Ruth Blake. Another working group will be located at Georgia Tech; the overall project will be based at the University of California-Riverside and led by Timothy Lyons.

This “Alternative Earths” team will be organized around the principle of understanding how the Earth has maintained a persistent biosphere through most of its history, how the biosphere manifests in “biosignatures” on a planetary scale, and how reconstructing this history can inform the search for life within and beyond the solar system.