Astrobiology is a scientific field within the life and environmental sciences that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe by investigating its deterministic conditions and contingent events. As a discipline, astrobiology is founded on the premise that life may exist beyond Earth.
Extraterrestrial life, alien life, or colloquially simply aliens is life which does not originate from Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been conclusively detected. Such life might range from simple forms such as prokaryotes to intelligent beings, possibly bringing forth civilizations that might be far more advanced than humanity. The Drake equation speculates about the existence of sapient life elsewhere in the universe. The science of extraterrestrial life is known as astrobiology.
Panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacecraft carrying unintended contamination by microorganisms, known as. The theory argues that life did not originate on Earth, but instead evolved somewhere else and seeded life as we know it.
The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to space science:
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, meteoroids, asteroids, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole.
The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit research organization incorporated in 1984 whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to use this knowledge to inspire and guide present and future generations, sharing knowledge with the public, the press, and the government. SETI stands for the "search for extraterrestrial intelligence".
The NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) was established in 1998 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) "to develop the field of astrobiology and provide a scientific framework for flight missions." In December 2019 the institute's activities were suspended.
Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe is a Sri Lankan-born British mathematician, astronomer and astrobiologist of Sinhalese ethnicity. His research interests include the interstellar medium, infrared astronomy, light scattering theory, applications of solid-state physics to astronomy, the early Solar System, comets, astrochemistry, the origin of life and astrobiology. A student and collaborator of Fred Hoyle, the pair worked jointly for over 40 years as influential proponents of panspermia. In 1974 they proposed the hypothesis that some dust in interstellar space was largely organic, later proven to be correct.
Ralph E. Pudritz is a theoretical astrophysicist tenured at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is an expert in the field of astrophysical jets, particularly those involved in star formation.
Kliment Arkadievich Timiryazev, sometimes Timiriazev was a Russian Imperial botanist and physiologist and a major proponent of the Evolution Theory of Charles Darwin in Russia. He founded a faculty of vegetable physiology and a laboratory at the Petrovskoye Academy.
The Faculty of Science is the largest of six faculties at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1962, the faculty is located in the Westdale neighbourhood. It houses 6,800 undergraduate students and 600 graduate students, across 39 upper-year undergraduate programs ranging from astrophysics, biochemistry, earth and environmental sciences, to life sciences, human behaviour, kinesiology and medical and radiation sciences. Notable discoveries at McMaster University include the development of neutron spectroscopy by Bertram Brockhouse which earned him a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1994.
The Carnegie Institution of Washington, known also for public purposes as the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), is an organization in the United States established to fund and perform scientific research. The institution is headquartered in Washington, D.C. As of June 30, 2020, the Institution's endowment was valued at $926.9 million. In 2018 the expenses for scientific programs and administration were $96.6 million. Eric Isaacs is president of the institution.
Caleb Asa Scharf is a British-American astronomer and popular science author. He is currently the senior scientist for astrobiology at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He formerly served as the director of the multidisciplinary Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University, New York.
The University of Edinburgh School of Physics and Astronomy is the physics department of the University of Edinburgh. The School was formed in 1993 by a merger of the Department of Physics and the Department of Astronomy, both at the University of Edinburgh. The Department of Physics itself was a merger between the Department of Natural Philosophy and the Department of Mathematical Physics in the late 1960s. The School is part of the University's College of Science and Engineering.
Lynn Justine Rothschild is an evolutionary biologist and astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center, and was a consulting Professor at Stanford University, where she taught Astrobiology and Space Exploration. She is an adjunct professor at Brown University. At Ames, her research has focused on how life, particularly microbes, has evolved in the context of the physical environment, both on Earth and potentially beyond our planet's boundaries. Since 2007 she has studied the effect of UV radiation on DNA synthesis, carbon metabolism and mutation/DNA repair in the Rift Valley of Kenya and the Bolivian Andes, and also in high altitude experiments atop Mount Everest, in balloon payloads with BioLaunch. She was the principal investigator of the first free-flyer synthetic biology payload which flew on the DLR EuCROPIS mission.
Talking About Life: Conversations on Astrobiology is a non-fiction book edited by astronomer Chris Impey that consists of interviews with three dozen leading experts on the subject of astrobiology. The subject matter ranges from the nature and limits of life on Earth to the current search for exoplanets and the prospects of intelligent life in the universe. The book was published as a hardcover by Cambridge University Press in 2010.
The Carl Sagan Institute: Pale Blue Dot and Beyond was founded in 2014 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York to further the search for habitable planets and moons in and outside the Solar System. It is focused on the characterization of exoplanets and the instruments to search for signs of life in the universe. The founder and current director of the institute is astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger.
Aomawa L. Shields is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at UC Irvine. Her research is focused on exploring the climate and habitability of small exoplanets, using data from observatories including NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Shields was a 2015 TED Fellow, and is active in science communication and outreach. She develops interactive workshops to encourage self-esteem and teach about astronomy, combines her training in theater and her career in astronomy.
The Planet Simulator, also known as a Planetary Simulator, is a climate-controlled simulation chamber designed to study the origin of life. The device was announced by researchers at McMaster University on behalf of the Origins Institute on 4 October 2018. The simulator project begun in 2012 and was funded with $1 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario government, and McMaster University. It was built and manufactured by Angstrom Engineering Inc of Kitchener, Ontario.
Sarah Rugheimer is a Swiss-American astrobiologist and astrophysicist at Jesus College, Oxford. Her research focuses on the atmospheric composition of exoplanets, and ways of detecting life.