Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE) Archives

Astronomy & Telescopes, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Exploring Exoplanets with Interferometry

by Keith CowingJune 11, 2026June 11, 2026

(Extract from the Executive Summary) Humanity stands at the threshold of answering one of its most profound questions: Does life exist beyond Earth?

Analog Studies, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

The Goldilocks Problem For Detecting Water In Terrestrial Planets: Constraining Water Abundances In The mid-IR With LIFE

by Keith CowingApril 10, 2026April 10, 2026

We investigate how well the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE) mission concept can detect habitable conditions on exoplanets through the presence of atmospheric water vapor as a proxy for surface […]

The different Solar System bodies and exoplanets this chapter focuses on, and associated missions. Those with a strong PlanetS involvement are shown with an asterisk. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Climates Of Terrestrial Exoplanets And Biosignatures

by Keith CowingJanuary 29, 2026January 29, 2026

Understanding the climates of terrestrial exoplanets and the detectability of biosignatures is an inherently interdisciplinary challenge, requiring the integration of insights from Solar System exploration, exoplanet observations and climate science. […]

Top: simulated reflection spectra observation of modern Earth analog for the HWO mission concept. The simulated flux is considered for a planetary system at 10 pc distance. The wavelength is between 0.15 and 2 µm. The 1σ and 2σ error bars are represented with cyan and light grey shaded area with solid edges respectively. The black curve is the spectrum from PSG. The cyan scatter plot represents the simulated observation points with corresponding uncertainties. The simulated reflection spectra is considered at a phase angle of 77.8◦ . Molecular features are labeled in black, and CIA features are marked in grey; Bottom: the associated SNR vs wavelength for the reflection spectra. The SNR is assumed to be 10 at three reference wavelengths: 0.35 µm, 0.55 µm and 1.2 µm -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Detectability of Atmospheric Biosignatures in Earth Analogs with Varying Surface Boundary Conditions: Prospects for Characterization in the UV, Visible, Near-Infrared, and Mid-Infrared Regions

by Keith CowingDecember 13, 2025December 13, 2025

The search for potentially habitable exoplanets centers on detecting biosignature molecules in Earth-like atmospheres, which makes it essential to understand their detectability under biologically and geologically influenced conditions.

Distribution of simulated EEC yield (solid contours) and underlying planet population (dotted contours) around FGK-type stars within 20 pc. We show the planetary radius over incident flux distribution, where the color shading represents the relative density of planet occurrences in this parameter space. The colored contours enclose 10% to 100% of the total planet counts, with the innermost contour indicating the highest-density regions. Grey dashed lines represent EEC boundaries around a Sun-like star with S/S⊕ ∈ [0.356, 1.107] and R/R⊕ ∈ [0.8 · S 0.25, 1.4] (Kopparapu et al. 2014; Stark et al. 2019; Quanz et al. 2022b). Top and right margin plots show the individual distributions of incident flux and planetary radius of detected and total underlying populations. Underlying synthetic planet populations are based on Kammerer et al. (2022). -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Detecting Atmospheric CO2 Trends as Population-Level Signatures for Long-Term Stable Water Oceans and Biotic Activity on Temperate Terrestrial Exoplanets

by Keith CowingJune 1, 2025June 1, 2025

Identifying key observables is essential for enhancing our knowledge of exoplanet habitability and biospheres, as well as improving future mission capabilities.

X-architecture rotating interferometer setup. LIFE current design has a scaling factor of q = 6 and nulling baseline bnull that can be adjusted from 10 meters to 100 meters. For details about this setup see Quanz et al. (2022).

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Photobombing For The Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE)

by Keith CowingApril 10, 2025September 18, 2025

One of the primary objectives in modern astronomy is to discover and study planets with characteristics similar to Earth. This pursuit involves analyzing the spectra of exoplanets and searching for […]

Illustration of a hypothetical planet covered in water. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Astrobiology (general), Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Intelligence & Language, Press Release, SETI & Technosignatures, Societal Issues

What If We Find Nothing In Our Search For Life Beyond Earth?

by Keith CowingApril 7, 2025April 7, 2025

What if we spend decades building advanced telescopes to search for life on other planets and come up empty-handed? A recent study led by ETH Zurich researchers including corresponding author […]

Countour plot of the S/N for a 1500 K planet orbiting AD Leonis M-dwarf star (orbit of 0.13 AU) at different luminosity (y-axis) and distance (x-axis), after one hour of integration time. The horizontal yellow line indicates the current AD Leonis to sun luminosity ratio. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE). XIV. Finding Terrestrial Protoplanets In The Galactic Neighborhood

by Keith CowingOctober 18, 2024October 18, 2024

The increased brightness temperature of young rocky protoplanets during their magma ocean epoch makes them potentially amenable to atmospheric characterization to distances from the solar system far greater than thermally […]

Retrieved spectra for the second retrieval set Left panel: pure HWO retrieval (magenta); Central panel: pure LIFE retrieval (blue); Right panel: HWO+LIFE retrieval (yellow). In all panels, the 2-σ and the 1-σ intervals are shown in increasingly darker hues, as well as the input spectra (black lines) with error bars (gray-shaded areas) for comparison. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE): XIII. The Value of Combining Thermal Emission and Reflected Light for the Characterization of Earth Twins

by Keith CowingJune 21, 2024June 21, 2024

Following the recommendations to NASA and ESA, the search for life on exoplanets will be a priority in the next decades. Two direct imaging space mission concepts are being developed: […]

Analog Studies, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Press Release

Using Earth As A Test Object For Exoplanet Science

by Keith CowingFebruary 27, 2024February 27, 2024

Life is indeed possible on Earth. This has been demonstrated in a study conducted by the Institute of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at ETH Zurich. Of course, the researchers’ intention […]