User:Aulses/Stellar Influences on an Origin of Life Setting/Ujons Peer Review

General info
Aulses
 * Whose work are you reviewing?


 * Link to draft you're reviewing:User:Aulses/Stellar Influences on an Origin of Life Setting
 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists):

Evaluate the drafted changes
(Compose a detailed peer review here, considering each of the key aspects listed above if it is relevant. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what feedback looks like.)

Overview


 * I think the paragraph that introduces considerations for biosignatures is really thorough and well structured, though there is some info there that isn’t really referenced in the section itself; maybe it could be good to move some of the background info down into that part of the article to expand it a bit more and make the lead more concise.
 * You might also mention alternative stellar classes after the discussion of M dwarfs, and list the atmospheric gasses you describe in depth after “atmospheric composition”
 * Specific suggestions for phrasing (just my opinion):
 * May be good to reference “physical, chemical, and biological” processes in the first sentence
 * “Lifecycles and characteristics of these stars are…”
 * “UV sources” rather than “simulators”? May also be good to define or describe what’s meant by shielding briefly
 * Could remove “as well” from the end of the first sentence of paragraph 3

UV and Abiogenesis


 * I don’t think words have to be capitalized in section titles besides proper nouns
 * Maybe start by stating the range of wavelengths corresponding to UV light?
 * I think photolysis = breaking of bonds specifically
 * If you were interested in including it, the possibility of UV selection of nucleobases is described in this paper (Sleep, 2018): https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2017.1778.

Experimental methods


 * Not sure if worth mentioning, but Liu et al 2021 used a broadband lamp to simulate the young sun in the prebiotic photoredox synthesis paper. Also for this section, UV photolysis plays a role in a few reaction networks that can form metabolic network intermediates (Ritson 2021, Liu 2021, I could probably find more if you were interested in talking about it in addition to ribonucleotides and sugars).

Stellar Influence


 * Maybe mention the temperature of M dwarf stars when they are introduced like is done for K type stars in the next section?
 * Would it be good to briefly discuss other stellar types as part of a more general overview of why M dwarfs are so attractive (e.g. time constraints on evolution due to short lifespans of giant stars)? Or briefly mention Proxima Centauri as an example of one such possibly habitable system.
 * It could be good to briefly define or describe the terms “transient”, rotational braking, and NUV/ FUV.
 * Potential solutions might not need to be its own section under M Dwarf UV shortage. The paragraphs flow pretty well as is.
 * The point the reference to Tian 2009 is making is a good one, but since the sun is G type maybe it could be rephrased in a way more directly connected to the citation; something like “This kind of situation could arise in the case where elevated UV emission from the M dwarf strips the atmosphere of habitable zone planets orbiting close enough in, as has been suggested for Mars early in the history of the solar system”.

Alternative stellar classes


 * I’ve seen stars up to F type considered for habitable systems; would it be worth it to at least discuss G types as well? Or in general, saying explicitly that spectral types change with age might be good. Maybe an HR diagram would make a good figure, especially showing the location (or even evolution) of M dwarfs.
 * I think the last sentence of the first paragraph could just say “aqueous prebiotic chemistry”.

Prebiotic Earth UV Conditions


 * Could link the term fluence to radiant exposure page
 * It might help to add citations for the end of the first paragraph and second paragraph
 * There is a nice chemical formula editor if you want to make them ~pretty~ (though they look good as they are)
 * The last sentence of the first paragraph of the CO2 section might be a little in the weeds of that particular study; it may also help to introduce BEDs and their significance in the paragraph before this, since they’re referenced for SO2 and H2S as well. Otherwise I had a hard time seeing their significance as a metric at first (mainly due to the context of abiogenesis)
 * Is the assumption that volcanic outgassing at 4 Ga was similar to today reasonable? Might be good to include as a caveat in the SO2 section, also to introduce other references than the Ranjan paper.

Considerations for Biosignatures


 * Might rephrase the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph a bit more; not sure how close “close paraphrasing” is, but “planets where life has existed long enough to change the planet’s surface and atmosphere in detectable ways” jumped out to me as similar in Rimmer 2018
 * See comment on overview section
 * For my articles, I resolved the complaints about the date values in the citations by just removing the month manually if the citation generator couldn’t grab the full date.

This is fantastic all around, such an interesting topic! super fun read!