Astrobiology…

a field with no actual data (since all biology is terran, not astro, biology) is getting trendy for the moment, in the hope that one of these days it will have something besides terran biology to actually look at. It’s a bit like studying primates in the hope that one day a Sasquatch or Yeti will turn up.

The main problem is that there is basically about zero likelihood there will ever be any data for this field. There is still an outside possibility that some microbe might be found in Martian soil or under the ice on one of the gas giant moons. That’s because, here on earth, we’ve found microbes surviving in fantastically hostile conditions, far from the normal sources of energy. So it’s possible similar critters are living in the incredibly hostile environments on these places.

The problem is a) that’s as far as we are going. The nearest star would take generations to reach, and the odds are nil that there will be a planet with life on it even if we sent a probe there at near light speed (which we can’t do). So if we find something it’s going to be in this solar system. And the question will remain: did it grow there independently or was it carried there as a hitchhiker by the same sort of meteor-blasting events that have brought Martian rocks here?

Bottom line: astrobiology is temporarily sexy cuz, hey! Extraterrestrial life is sexy. But it’s going to largely be a dead end of speculation. At most, it could yield us some information about some microbes. If we are looking for anything beyond that, we will have to apply to Hollywood.