Once upon a time, I lost a race for Best Science Blog of 2006. It was a glorious race, and one that was extremely close. But in the end, PZ Myers of Pharyngula became the winner by a little over 1% of the vote. A mandate!
I had promised that, if I were to lose, I would do a couple of things. One was praise PZ at The Amaz!ng Meeting. That will come this Saturday, when I give my talk. I have plenty of time to take antacids before then.
The second was to write a post praising biology. I am a man of my word (even if it takes me a few weeks), so here you go. Now, I could talk about pure biology, but really, that would be incredibly dull and pointless. The only way to possibly make it interesting would be to mix in some astronomy… so how about astrobiology?
[Okay, I’ll stop being sarcastic now.]
Astrobiology used to be a discipline without any data– how do you study alien life without any actual, y’know, aliens?
In fact, there is a huge amount to learn. As far as we know, life needs air, warmth to some degree, a planet, a star to give it energy (or maybe energy from internal sources like radioactive decay, leftover heat from its formation, or tidal energy from nearby big moons), complex chemistry, and much more. All of these are well within our abilities to study, and in many of these fields there is a fair amount we can say with some certainty. So far from being pie in the sky, this is a very down-to-earth field of study.
But there’s so much to know! How do you keep up?
I can think of two ways. One is Astrobiology Magazine. This NASA-run site has tons of information on all the sciences involved with astrobiology, including the ones I mentioned above, and far more. It’s updated daily and it has an RSS feed as well (if you don’t know about RSS feeds, then read this first. I use it here on the BAblog, and I use it to read blogs all the time).
Still, maybe you don’t want to just jump in; you’d rather have a warmup first, something to walk you through the basics. Happily, Mary Ann Liebert publishers have put online a free PDF version of The Astrobiology Primer. This is a pretty amazing collection of what astrobiology is and what it’s based on. As they say on Page 1:
The Astrobiology Primer has been created as a reference tool for those who are interested in the interdisciplinary field of astrobiology. The field incorporates many diverse research endeavors, but it is our hope that this slim volume will present the reader with all he or she needs to know to become involved and to understand, at least at a fundamental level, the state of the art.
I am going to sit and read this marvelous work when I have an hour or two to snuggle up in the warm sunlight of our nearest star. Unfortunately, Mike Griffin, the current Administrator of NASA, has made it pretty clear he doesn’t think astrobiology is all that important (there are devastating cuts to the field planned for the next two years). However, he has also said, "I did think astrobiology was less important than traditional space science. It had less intrinsic subject matter to it, and was less advanced. If the community rises up and says it should be funded, we’ll rethink it.".
I am rising up. Astrobiology is an incredible field with as much or more to offer than many other areas of research NASA is doing, and in my opinion is critical to our effort to go back to the Moon and on, eventually, to Mars.
After all, when we get to these other worlds, the aliens will be us.
January 15th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Another very nicely written piece, Phil.
You know, you could be accused of copping out - rather than writing about biology per se you’ve chosen to write about the crossover between space science and biology. But, hey, that’s cool. I’m a biochemist, wotking in the crossover between biology and chemistry.
Just remember that a portion of your devoted readership comprises biologists (or other biological scientists).
January 15th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Oops, just spotted the typo. That’s meant to be “working” not “wotking”.
January 15th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Phil,
Nicely done. And thanks for the link to the primer. It’s now saved on my computer for reference.
Did you read about the appointment of another Bush/Cheney supporter as an “advisor” to Griffin?
January 15th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Victory is sweet…
You may recall a ferociously hardfought battle between myself and the Bad Astronomer over the Weblog Awards a while back—a battle I won easily, of course, by the overwhelming majority of approximately 1%—and that we had bet each other vario…
January 15th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Okay, Phil and Pharyngula — I got your astrobiology, right here.
how’s them junk dna apples fer ya?
(this link goes to an excellent article for the skeptically minded to hone their talents on, by the way… )
January 15th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
sooooo… when can we expect the Cthulhu Kittys to take over, now that Pharyngula’s won?
January 15th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
So, Phil how many e-mails will it take to get NASA to reconsider?
GAry 7
January 15th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Okay, Spacewriter, that article was a bit too much work for a parody. Is it intended to be a serious article by a woo?
January 15th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Mike,
Beats me. Someone sent it to me in email today and I thought it was a hoax, but it appears not to be.
What annoys me is that it appears in a self-styled “progressive” newspaper… ranks right up there with matched male and female crystals…
January 15th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
The Amaz!ng Meeting link needs a .com!
January 15th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
I guess much of astrobiology is just bad biology. E.g.: Schwabe C (2002): Genomic Potential Hypothesis of Evolution: A Concept of Biogenesis in Habitable Spaces of the Universe. Anat Rec. 268(3):171-179
For critical review see:
Hafner M and Korthof G. (2006): Does a “500 million-year-old hormone” disprove Darwin?
FASEB J. 20(9):1290-1292
and:
A Chemist’s View of Life: Ultimate Reductionism & Dissent (http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/korthof56.htm)
January 15th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
BTW, I hope the astronomy in astrobiology is better then its biology. Or is astrobiology a safe haven for weird ideas that allows scientist to publish anything that would have not passed peer reviewing in pure biological or astronomical journals?
January 15th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
thaumaturge– fixed. Thanks!
January 16th, 2007 at 3:15 am
As far as I know, astrobiology is as rigorous as any other branch of science. Using life on Earth as a yardstick, astrobiologists can work out where life is most likely to be found elsewhere, and what it might look like. Of course, if it is “life, Jim, but not as we know it”, we might not even recognise it. So another avenue of exploration for astrobiologists is to try and work out what signs life would exhibit, even if it isn’t something we can easily recognise.
January 16th, 2007 at 4:27 am
“Little intrinsic subject matter”…..!!? How about “no intrinsic subject matter”! What is there to study? We’re talking about a science, right?
January 16th, 2007 at 4:58 am
For me, astrobiology is protoscience. With great potential and significance, but still proto. Reason is simple - for now, we can only theorize. Like rocketry in times of Tsiolkovsky.
January 16th, 2007 at 7:14 am
But what if Earth is the only place that life is?
Look at the probability figures given for life starting, even from Carl Sagen. I will have to hunt for them if you really want them, but they are very very small, plus there is also a small matter of Fred Hoyle’s Boeing
That given, how can tax dollars / pounds / euros be justified here, when there is a shrinking cake and we need to pick winners?
January 16th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Given that we know there’s a shrinking cake, wouldn’t it make sense to give the resources to the fields of study that will be useful in going out and acquiring another cake? Because, if astronomy and astrobiology are going to bring us a cake-planet, I don’t think any expense should be spared.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Because I became a great-grandmother yesterday and because I love our wondrous universe and the amazing things we learn about it every day, I stole your picture on this blog entry! I hope I have not committed some felonious intellectual theft but I sent it to the new mom and baby because it described my fascination with learning so well! Since it went by e-mail it will probably go everywhere because it seems that anything committed to the electronic airwaves proliferates exponentially. Sorry about that but thank you!! Regards!!
January 16th, 2007 at 11:41 am
“life needs air…”etc. I’d change that to “life as we know it needs air, ” etc. I would not rule out the Cheela of Robert Forward yet.
January 16th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
““life needs air…â€etc. I’d change that to “life as we know it needs air, †etc. I would not rule out the Cheela of Robert Forward yet. ”
Actually even that is wrong, there are life forms at the bottom of the ocean that do not use Oxygen or Energy from the sun as the basis of thier life cycle instead taking energy from geothermal heat, methane and sulphides. Do a search for “Black Smoker” for more details
January 21st, 2007 at 6:17 am
PeteM beat me to it, but yeah, even your ordinary lakes and streams are chock full of those pesky “air-breathing” trout out there.
Really, it may be enough to have “complex chemistry”.
January 31st, 2007 at 1:13 pm
I have just read the primer and found it very interesting since it can be seen as a kind of science divulgation.
Best regards