Earth Meets Universe

Caleb Scharf

Columbia University

Finding just one example of a biosphere beyond the solar system would not only place real constraints on life's cosmic abundance and origins, but also allow us to place the Earth in proper context. To do this we need to search for astronomically visible, surface dominant, living systems. One step towards this is the process of evaluating the physical and biological environments of a diversity of rocky worlds to understand their climatological nature. I'll review some work on this that indicates an urgent need to better understand the orbital dynamics of exoplanetary systems, and I'll describe how we're doing this.