Abstract -
Finding just one example of a biosphere beyond the solar system would
not only place real constraints on life's cosmic abundance and
origins, but also allow us to place the Earth in proper context. To do
this we need to search for astronomically visible, surface dominant,
living systems. One step towards this is the process of evaluating the
physical and biological environments of a diversity of rocky worlds to
understand their climatological states. Along the way we need to
better constrain the orbital behavior of observed exoplanetary
systems. I'll review some developing work that attempts to meld
state-of-the-art climate modeling with very high precision simulation
of planetary spin-orbit behavior, with the goal of tracking down
living worlds.