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New Statistical Measures of Atmospheric Disequilibria and Implications for Detecting Life and Technology
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  • Theresa Fisher,
  • Sara Walker,
  • Michael Line,
  • Hyunju Kim,
  • Camerian Millsaps
Theresa Fisher
Arizona State University, Arizona State University

Corresponding Author:tfisher4@asu.edu

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Sara Walker
Arizona State University, Arizona State University
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Michael Line
Arizona State University, Arizona State University
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Hyunju Kim
Arizona State University, Arizona State University
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Camerian Millsaps
Arizona State University, Arizona State University
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Abstract

Exoplanets exhibit properties suggestive of a diversity of worlds far exceeding that observed within our own solar system. This diversity, combined with limited data, poses challenges for future exoplanet characterization, especially regarding life detection: not only is the diversity planets unprecedented, but the low resolution and s/n data available to current and near-future technology demand we improve our ability to infer properties of planetary atmospheres, surfaces and potential signs of life from very little data. For this reason, recent consensus recommendations from both within the exoplanet science community, and without, are directing the field to move from searching from specific products of life to developing probabilistic frameworks for inferring the presence of life that encompass entire planetary systems. Here, we demonstrate a new framework based on statistical characterization of planetary atmospheric chemistries with the goal to provide the quantitative tools required by this approach. We validate these tools against current observational constraints available for Jovian worlds by constructing chemical reaction networks (CRNs) from the atmospheres of hot jupiters simulated over a wide range of temperatures and metallicities using VULCAN. For each model, we calculated measures of the CRN topology and more traditional measures of disequilbrium. To model the uncertainty in observations, these properties were then used as the basis for an interpolation function, which was then fed a series of 10,000 point Gaussian distributions of possible initial conditions to simulate the likelihood distribution of possible atmospheric models centered around a specific observable such as T or metallicity. We present results demonstrating how our multivariate, statistical approach permits quantifying distance from disequilibrium in Jovian atmospheres. We discuss implications for inferring the presence of life as a driver of atmospheric disequilibrium on terrestrial worlds, and how technologically produced molecules could influence CRN topology.