Pith Number

pith:H3M4WJQG

pith:2026:H3M4WJQGCNJ2Q2ZNI3J3TYALFH

not attested not anchored not stored refs resolved

The First Remotely Detected Biosignature May Not Be the Most Common: Implications for JWST and HWO

Ravi Kopparapu

The first remotely detected biosignature is likely to come from a detectability-favored outlier rather than a typical Earth analog.

arxiv:2605.16674 v1 · 2026-05-15 · astro-ph.EP · astro-ph.GA · astro-ph.IM · astro-ph.SR

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\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{H3M4WJQGCNJ2Q2ZNI3J3TYALFH}

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Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

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The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

a rare but observationally favored planet class can dominate early detections even when it is intrinsically uncommon. For JWST, an early biosignature detection is most likely to arise from a detectability favored outlier, such as a sub-Neptune or other atmosphere rich planet around a nearby M dwarf, rather than from a true Earth analog.

C2weakest assumption

The simple detectability model combined with known signal scalings is sufficient to determine which planet classes will dominate early detections; this enters in the abstract's description of applying signal scalings and a detectability model to compare JWST and HWO strategies.

C3one line summary

Selection effects in JWST transmission spectroscopy and HWO reflected-light imaging may cause the first biosignature detection to arise from an atypical planet rather than a representative Earth analog.

References

37 extracted · 37 resolved · 1 Pith anchors

[1] Arney, G., Domagal-Goldman, S. D., Meadows, V. S., et al. 2016, Astrobiology, 16, 873 2016

[2] Arney, G. N. 2019, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 873, L7 2019

[3] 2019, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 887, L14 2019

[4] 2024, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 968, L22 2024

[5] Dawson, R. I., & Johnson, J. A. 2018, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 56, 175, doi: 10.1146/annurev-astro-081817-051853 2018 · doi:10.1146/annurev-astro-081817-051853

Formal links

2 machine-checked theorem links

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-20T00:02:35.737599Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

3ed9cb26061353a86b2d46d3b9e00b29c15194cec91664979cf6bf3658e77e26

Aliases

arxiv: 2605.16674 · arxiv_version: 2605.16674v1 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2605.16674 · pith_short_12: H3M4WJQGCNJ2 · pith_short_16: H3M4WJQGCNJ2Q2ZN · pith_short_8: H3M4WJQG

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/H3M4WJQGCNJ2Q2ZNI3J3TYALFH \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 3ed9cb26061353a86b2d46d3b9e00b29c15194cec91664979cf6bf3658e77e26

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "bbff76a349fbf4e99bd7540a7e546cd2c081f00ef0aecc8ece8b9fd090f73bd9",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [
      "astro-ph.GA",
      "astro-ph.IM",
      "astro-ph.SR"
    ],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "astro-ph.EP",
    "submitted_at": "2026-05-15T22:26:19Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "961c7435edb92a957f954fe256e516e06a3b69aaff774c891ab27c9e33382f3e"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2605.16674",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 1
  }
}