Amber Vanessa Young

The Roadmap to Life Elsewhere: The Biosignature Decision Tree Framework

Extrasolar planets

Exciting discoveries are on the horizon with the development of a next generation mission concept called the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). With this new mission one of the main objectives will be to search for atmospheric biosignatures on a sample of potentially habitable exoplanets. My main goal in this research project is to help develop robust life detection strategies for HWO that take into account searching for biosignatures of interest to the community, ruling out false-positives, all while maintaining observational efficiency. To do this, our research team has worked to develop a preliminary observational biosignature decision tree, which is a framework designed to organize exoplanet observations based on wavelength and our understanding of Earth's inhabitance over the course of its geological history.

The Search for Life is in Flux: Connecting Biosignature Gas Detections to Physical Processes

An important aspect to searching for biosignatures on other planets is being able to rule out potential false positives mechanisms that can mimic signs of life. This means that assessing the validity of a life detection will involve connecting an observed biosignature to physical planetary processes. As part of my research, the goal is to use retrieval modeling coupled with atmospheric photochemical/climate modeling tools to determine our ability to infer chemical species fluxes (i.e., production/destruction rates) from abundance information that can be gathered from a planet’s spectrum.

Examining the Detectability of Chemical Disequilibrium Biosignatures

Extrasolar planets

Another main area of my research is studying chemical disequilibrium, another potentially key biosignature we could search for on other worlds. The idea is that life’s metabolic processes could influence the chemical state of a planet’s atmosphere similarly to how life has played a significant role in influencing Earth’s atmosphere over time. In this study, I examined our ability to infer chemical disequilibrium from simulated remote observations of Earth-like exoplanet analogs. This involved coupling atmospheric retrievals with a thermodynamics model in order to determine how observational uncertainty influences our interpretations of chemical disequilibrium.

Pathways Research Assistant, Planetary Studies

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center - 8800 Greenbelt Rd Greenbelt MD, 20771

January 2023 - Present