Toward Network‐Based Planetary Biosignatures: Atmospheric Chemistry as Unipartite, Unweighted, Undirected Networks

Abstract

AbstractPrevious examinations of astrophysical chemical reaction networks found that Earth's atmospheric network was distinct in its hierarchical organization and scale‐free nature. If Earth's unique atmospheric network structure is due to the coevolution between the biosphere and atmosphere, it may hint at a novel planetary‐scale biosignature. Here, we use updated chemical reaction networks of planetary atmospheres and explore their topologies using a plethora of diagnostic techniques from network science and graph theory, including global metrics, centrality metrics, community detection, and cluster analysis methods. We show that the topologies of atmospheric chemical reaction networks of different planetary bodies in the Solar System are distinct from one another. While we find that model networks of Earth's atmosphere do not display scale‐free topology, Earth's chemical reaction network is nonetheless distinguishable from those of other Solar System atmospheres through various other metrics. Earth's network has the most nonrandom topology of all the planetary networks and, in some global metrics, is more similar to biological networks than are the other planetary networks. Finally, we discuss how further investigations of atmospheric chemical networks using more advanced network representations and novel network metrics may lead to the development of a network‐based biosignature applicable to exoplanets.