Astrobiology and Evolution
Chris Bennett
University of Central Florida
Astrobiology is an incredibly interdisciplinary field which focuses on attempting to understand how we think life may have evolved on Earth, how life has adapted to some of the most extreme environments, what are the limits that life as we know it could potentially thrive on the Earth (to assess what we may mean by habitability), and where else in the solar system or universe may provide an environment that is thought to be conducive to life. We will cover these topics as well as: i) what we know looking backwards in time beyond the evolutionary derived last common ancestor, and review some of the earliest signatures of life on Earth, ii) what is known about the conditions of the primordial earth and solar system during the Hadean era, and the potential for the production and evolution of biomolecules and polymers necessary for life to evolve in this period (i.e. could these biomolecules be produced sufficiently by endogenous production schemes on Earth or delivered exogenously via influx from the asteroid or cometary populations), iii) how these consequences might influence where to look for life elsewhere in the solar system and beyond (i.e. would we expect life elsewhere to evolve in a similar way, or is the Earth somehow ‘special’?), and iv) how space agencies are utilizing space missions and craft to discover Earth-like exoplanets and explore habitable worlds within our solar system to search for life (e.g., at Jupiter’s moon Europa, or Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan), and finally, v) what are the prospects for finding life in the Universe?