What Is Astrobiology?
(Abstracted from L.J. Rothschild, McGraw Hill Encyclopedia 2002)

Astrobiology is the scientific study of the living universe, how it arrived at this point in time, and where it is heading. It starts with life on Earth, the only place where life is known to exist, and extends into the farthest reaches of the cosmos. It ranges in time from the big bang and continues on into the future. The field of Astrobiology covers a diverse range of topics which can be categorized under major questions: Where did life come from? What is its future? Are we alone in the universe? Like any newborn, Astrobiology is growing and changing rapidly. The second Astrobiology Science Conference 2002 is the major conference for this field.

Astrobiology (from the Greek words astron meaning star, bios meaning life and logos or description) is arguably the most ancient of sciences. Gazing up at the sky it is easy to imagine that we have an intimate link with the heavens. Over 7000 years ago in Scotland, England and Ireland, stones were aligned to the rising or setting moon, and later the Sun. The connection between life on Earth and astronomy was recognized in many ancient cultures, including the Egyptian where it was used to calculate complex calendars for commerce and agriculture. The Babylonians used it for astrology (the idea that human events were linked to heavenly events), the Greeks for agriculture and navigation, the Muslims for its religious implications, and the Chinese in the belief that the heavens reflected the Emperor's actions.

Even earlier, man noticed the wondrous diversity of living creatures, which he depicted in cave paintings at least 31,000 years ago. Using a telescope, the night sky revealed distant bodies such as Mars, with features that appeared to wax and wane with the seasons. Could some of these harbor life, he must have wondered, perhaps even like our own? Where would all this lead in the future? Would our descendants travel to these distant bodies, or would we be visited by extraterrestrial creatures?

While these questions have been asked for millennia, rapid advances in the sciences and the ability to travel out into space have set the stage for a concerted scientific examination of these questions. Then, in 1996 David McKay of NASA's Johnson Space Center and colleagues interpreted chemical and geological evidence from a meteorite found in the Antarctic that originated on Mars to argue that life was once present on the red planet. Suddenly scientists from disparate fields coalesced under the new meta-discipline. "Astrobiology," the name for the emerging discipline, is a word first used in the early 1950s as a Russian translation of exobiology, and revived in 1995 by then NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science, Wesley T. Huntress, Jr. to describe on-going activities at NASA's Ames Research Center. In many ways Astrobiology is evolutionary biology writ large, on a canvas that stretches over billions of years and across the entire universe. (click here to review the entire article)

For more information on Astrobiology:

GENERAL ASTROBIOLOGY

NASA Astrobiology Institute:
http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/

Astrobiology at NASA:
http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/

Spaceref.com Astrobiology Web Site:
http://astrobiology.com/

SETI Institute:
http://www.seti.org/

ON-LINE ASTROBIOLOGY ARTICLES AND LINKS

The Astrobiology Index (articles from various science journals):
http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_articles1.html

Space.com Astrobiology site: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/index.html

LAST YEAR'S CONFERENCE WEBSITE

http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/conferences/2001/ABSciConf/index.html

Last year's abstracts, AbSciCon 2000:
http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/conferences/2000/ABSciConf/index.html