DIX Planetary Science Seminar

The search for life beyond Earth has entered a new era, driven by JWST and the imminent arrival of Europa Clipper, JUICE, and future missions to the Saturnian system and beyond. These efforts will generate an unprecedented volume of compositional and contextual data across diverse planetary environments, with the potential to reveal conditions suitable for life. In this unfolding chapter of high-resolution data, a shift toward data-driven analysis offers a way to detect subtle patterns, resolve overlapping signals, and integrate diverse measurements across instruments and epochs. In this talk, I will present two studies that exemplify this approach.

In the first study, we apply a spectral decomposition framework to JWST NIRSpec observations of Europa. We isolate spatial-spectral modes across seven diagnostic bands and four observation geometries. This recovers known features more coherently and reveals subtle spectral signatures and their distribution. On the trailing hemisphere, spectral variability traces low-albedo regions irradiated by Jovian magnetospheric plasma. On the leading hemisphere, we identify anomalous ice texture with enrichment in volatiles across chaos terrains. We propose these properties may be causally related through longer volatile residence in a porous matrix, rather than very recent resurfacing. This has implications for the supply rate of endogenic carbon to Europa's surface and its habitability.

In the second study, we propose a new class of biosignature based on the statistical structure of organic assemblages. We adapt ecodiversity metrics to compare amino acid profiles across biotic and abiotic environments. We find that biotic samples are consistently more diverse than their abiotic counterparts. This distinction also holds for the deep geologic record and for fatty acids. Because the method relies only on relative abundances, it is applicable to molecular composition data from archived, current, and planned planetary missions. By capturing a statistical property of life's chemical organization, it may also transcend biosignatures contingent on Earth's evolutionary history.

Together, these studies demonstrate the power of a statistically rigorous, data-driven approach to extend the reach of measurements from observations and planetary missions, in search of life and its precursors beyond Earth.

Sign up to meet with and/or have lunch with the speaker using the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14ywAi_ZDGl_9a49VLqgPnaQfZ6yJ5-doXzrJpHnqYUY/edit?usp=sharing