By Mrina Nikrad
“I am interested in Astrobiology”. When they hear that phrase, some people look amused, like I was trying to be funny. Others look at me like I’m crazy, a poor misled student with big goals and a disturbed mind (soon to become an even more disturbed scientist using tax dollars). Sure, astrobiology sounds as far out as E.T., more like science fiction than science progress. However, scientists in universities all over the world are working on some aspect of astrobiology. The words some aspect are the keys in that sentence. Before we get any further, let me define what astrobiology is and what all it encompasses.
Astrobiology is also known as exobiology. The main goal of this discipline is to explore the possibility of life on other planets, how life evolved on our planet or other space bodies, whether humans might be able to reach and colonize other planets, and whether terrestrial life can be sustained on other planets. If you think about it, this is a really involved field that requires knowledge about astronomy, chemistry, biology, evolution, statistics, genetics, mathematics, engineering, space flight, and… the list could go on forever. So really, most scientists are studying something that could be applied to the field of astrobiology.
I can almost see most people’s eyes gloss over at the mention of things like “chemistry” and “statistics”. In fact I think my eyes glossed over a little, so maybe I’m just projecting. The thing is, taken separately, these fields are not all that interesting to me. I don’t really care about chemistry… but when I think of astrobiology, the likelihood that statistically there has got to be life on some other planets, suddenly all these disciplines (even chemistry) seem a lot more interesting. Suddenly, I want to know what kind of biology could possibly survive in the nooks and crannies of space, what kind of space ship would I need to get to it, how did it evolve? It’s the equivalent of wearing academic beer goggles. Everything looks a lot more exciting to me when viewed through the lens of astrobiology.
Speculating further about life on other planets, astrobiologists admit that it probably won’t be little green men. We are most likely to find microbial life hidden in subterranean permafrost or thriving near hot vents of a vast alien ocean. Mars has plenty of permafrost and used to be like Earth once. No reason it couldn’t harbor life. Europa is known to have a vast ocean covered with ice; it even has thermal energy to keep that water in liquid form. Not a bad start for a planetoid. Titan has geysers and pools of liquid organic materials, prime environment for a primordial soup. Saturn and Jupiter are massive, who is to say that life couldn’t exist in a small pocket somewhere? The appeal of astrobiology is not in finding E.T. (although that is pretty sexy), but in just being open to the possibilities and allowing the mind to stretch far and be adventurous.
