Astrobiology is the study of the living universe.
Advances in science and technology are yielding dramatic new knowledge about the origin, distribution, and destiny of life.
Life on Earth has been found thriving at environmental extremes such as in Antarctic rocks, boiling hot springs, and aquifers buried kilometers below the land surface.
liquid water, the one essential ingredient for life as we know it, once flowed on the surface of the planet Mars and exists today below the icy crust of Jupiter's moon, Europa. Life on Earth has been traced back 3.8 billion years to the period of heavy cometary bombardment, an era that simultaneously brought life-giving water and organic compounds to the terrestrial planets while battering them with lethal quantities of impact energy. Astrobiology attempts to study the the exsitence of life in places other than planet earth.
Astrobiologist
consider the following questions to determine if life is in these distant
places.
How do habitable worlds form and how do they evolve?
How did living systems emerge? How can we recognize other biospheres?
How have the Earth and its biosphere influenced each other over time?
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