Keith Hawkins
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Where in the Galaxy could life exist? Answering that requires knowing not only where rocky planets sit, but whether they have the chemical ingredients life needs.
- Fields
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Earth & Environmental Science
Physics
- Topics
phosphorus
stellar abundances
galactic chemical evolution
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Measure phosphorus abundances in stars across two distinct cosmic environments, the Milky Way and the accreted Gaia Enceladus dwarf galaxy, using astronomical spectroscopic observations, to constrain how much bulk phosphorus planets can inherit.
- Build new predictive models of phosphorus partitioning in metal-silicate systems, to determine how much phosphorus is drawn into a planet's metallic core rather than remaining in the rocky mantle.
- Develop experimentally grounded models of phosphorus partitioning in mineral-melt systems, to test whether available phosphorus can reach a rocky planet's surface where life would require it.
- Establish a combined astronomical and petrological framework linking planet-hosting star compositions to expected surface phosphorus abundances, as a criterion for locating potentially habitable worlds.
More about the research
Phosphorus is one of the most important and least studied of these, because over geologic timescales it is the nutrient that limits how much biological productivity a planet surface can support. This project follows phosphorus from the stars that seed planet-forming material all the way to the surface of a rocky planet, combining astronomical observation with petrology, the experimental study of rocks and how elements distribute among them.
Why it matters
Astronomers can now measure the compositions of many planet-hosting stars but cannot say what those compositions imply for a planet's habitability. A framework connecting stellar phosphorus to surface phosphorus on rocky planets could help prioritize which stars and planets are worth the expensive follow-up observations in the search for life, and it links Earth and planetary science methods to questions in galactic astronomy.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jason Steffen
University of Nevada-Las Vegas, NV·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Model how galactic chemical evolution, the gradual enrichment of the Galaxy with elements forged in stars and their remnants, changes the raw material available to form rocky planets over cosmic time.
David Weinberg
Ohio State University, OH·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Measure how much core-collapse supernovae, Type Ia supernovae and asymptotic giant branch stars contribute to element abundance patterns, by modeling data from large spectroscopic surveys of Milky Way stars.
Robert Mathieu
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Build the APOGEE-GALEX-Gaia Catalog, a sample of thousands of white dwarf binaries that have exchanged mass, by combining infrared APOGEE spectra with GALEX ultraviolet data and Gaia data.
The school
University of Texas at Austin: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 871 research doctorates a year.
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