Biomarkers of Habitable Worlds - Super-Earths and Earths

Abstract A decade of exoplanet search has led to surprising discoveries, from giant planets close to their star, to planets orbiting two stars, all the way to the first extremely hot, rocky worlds with potentially permanent lava on their surfaces due to the star's proximity. Observation techniques have reached the sensitivity to explore the chemical composition of the atmospheres as well as physical structure of some detected planets. Recent advances in detection techniques find planets of less than 10MEarth(so called Super-Earths), among them some that may potentially be habitable. Two confirmed non-transiting planets and several transiting Kepler planetary candidates orbit in the Habitable Zone of their host star. The detection and characterization of rocky and potentially Earth-like planets is approaching rapidly with future ground- and space-missions, that can explore the planetary environments by analyzing their atmosphere remotely. The results of a first generation space mission will most likely be an amazing scope of diverse planets that will set planet formation, evolution as well as our planet in an overall context.