Space researchers regularly check for life on Earth, primarily to calibrate existing and promising scientific methods. A new similar experiment was carried out by Swiss experts working on the LIFE space telescope-interferometer project. They tested whether such a device could find a planet from a distance of ten parsecs. As the calibration target, they chose the only celestial body where life is known to exist.

Of course, you can’t study it as an exoplanet by taking a telescope and sending it ten parsecs (almost 33 light-years) away from Earth. For the experiment, Swiss scientists used modeling methods. They took the data accumulated by the infrared device as a starting point. GIMMICKRY Earth from remote sensing satellite This (EOS PM-1). Based on this set of information, a model of the planet’s radiation in the mid-IR range was developed.

Corrections for noise and the distance at which the observation was made (those ten parsecs) were added to this radiation flux. Finally the faint spot in the sky was “revealed” to the simulated instruments of the simulated telescope. The results turned out to be very encouraging: in such cases, it is expected to be placed on LIFE The detectors can capture enough light to analyze it and reliably generate spectral lines of the compounds most important to life.

Scientists were primarily interested in carbon dioxide, water, ozone and methane. All these molecules in the experiment managed not only to detect, but also to determine their concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere. The simulation took into account the seasonality of the studied planet and the view from different angles. However, these factors had a weak effect on the efficiency of detection of target molecules. However, the reality of seasonality, an important factor in the viability of the planet, also emerged.

Simply put, within a radius of 10 parsecs from Earth, aliens with scientific methods similar to ours can not only see that this planet is habitable, but can also state with great confidence that this planet is currently alive. Similarly perspective telescope LIFE It will be able to scan the habitability of an exoplanet 32.6 light years away from us. And even discover extraterrestrial life!

A scientific article was published in the journal, describing the data and model research methodology, as well as detailed results. Astrophysical Journal, is being examined. The authors of the study are astrophysicists from the Swiss Technical University Zurich (ETH Zurich) and University of Zurich (UZH).

Project Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFEliterally — “Big interferometer [пошуку] exoplanets”) started in 2017 and is headquartered in Zurich. It is an international collaboration working on a mission to detect and analyze habitable exoplanets. The technical aspect of the telescope is not yet finished as of 2024, but it will be a space interferometer consisting of five small instruments that function as a single observatory According to the plan, they will be launched to an area near the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and will complete the toolkit.