Towards completing Planetary Systems: The role of minor bodies on life growth and survival

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the importance of minor bodies like Trojans, moons, and comets in understanding planetary system formation, evolution, and the emergence of life, highlighting the need for their detection in extrasolar systems.

Contribution

It advocates for the detection and study of minor bodies in extrasolar systems to better understand planetary system development and life's origins.

Findings

Minor bodies are key tracers of planetary system evolution.

Detection of minor bodies can inform about conditions for life.

Understanding minor bodies aids in identifying Earth-like planets.

Abstract

The search for extrasolar planets in the past decades has shown that planets abound in the Solar neighborhood. While we are still missing an Earth twin, the forthcoming space missions and ground-based instrumentation are already driven to achieve this goal. But, in order to fully understand the conditions for life appearing in the Solar System, we still miss some pieces of the planetary system jigsaw puzzle, namely a deeper understanding of the minor bodies. Trojans, moons, and comets are tracers of the formation and evolution processes of planetary systems. These missing pieces are also critical to understand the emergence and evolution of life over millions of years. With the large crop of planetary systems discovered so far and yet to be detected with the forthcoming missions, the hunt for minor bodies in extrasolar systems is a natural continuation of our search for real Solar System- and, in particular, Earth- analogs. This white paper is focused on detection of these minor components and their relevance in the emergence, evolution and survival of life.