Cosmic Shoreline for all known planetary systems orbiting M-dwarf-type stars. The black dashed-dotted line is our newly proposed Empirical Cosmic Shoreline (ECS), same as in Figure 1. The gray points mark the systems whose atmospheres have not been studied; the orange ones mark the planets with reported strong non-detections; and the green ones mark the planets with a (tentative) atmosphere detection. — astro-ph.EP
The Cosmic Shoreline concept was introduced as a way to separate planets with and without atmosphere, based on the relationship between the cumulative instellation and the escape velocity observed in the Solar System.
The exoplanet community has tried to refine the way we understand the cosmic shoreline in order to provide a consistent tool for establishing the hierarchy for exoplanet observations.
This is particularly relevant when trying to unveil small exoplanet atmospheres with the JWST or the upcoming ELTs. Here, our goal is to use an empirical approach to refine the Cosmic Shoreline concept. In particular, we used the data provided by the ExoAtmospheres database, using the largest available sample of exoplanets with confirmed atmospheric detections.
We reconcile limitations in the classical shoreline definition by anchoring our Empirical Cosmic Shoreline (ECS) to both Mars and the irradiated super-Earth 55 Cnc e. The resulting relation exhibits a significantly steeper slope than previously theorized. Applied to planets orbiting M dwarfs, prime targets for habitable-zone studies, the ECS suggests that a larger fraction retain atmospheres than predicted by classical models when using standard Ixuv estimates.
However, incorporating revised XUV fluence histories for low-mass M dwarfs (M< 0.35 Ms) reveals severe atmospheric vulnerability: only seven small planets (R<1.7 Re) orbit securely within the retention zone of these stars.
We finally identify high-priority targets for the JWST Rocky Worlds survey and future ELT observations based on their ECS positioning and Transmission Spectroscopy Metrics. Future efforts must focus on expanding the empirical validations of the ECS, particularly through high-precision observations of borderline candidates and systems with well-constrained XUV histories. [Abridged]
Pedro Meni-Gallardo, Enric Pallé
Comments: Submitted to A&A Journal
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2508.12865 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2508.12865v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.12865
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Submission history
From: Pedro Pablo Meni Gallardo
[v1] Mon, 18 Aug 2025 12:03:57 UTC (1,688 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12865
Astrobiology,