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Astrobiology

Frontier or fiction

Nature volume 488, pages 160–161 (2012)Cite this article

Astrobiology, the study of life in the Universe, is sometimes criticized as being a fashionable label with which to rebrand existing research fields. Its practitioners, however, argue that the discipline provides a broad framework for developing a better understanding of the frontiers of biology. A biologist and a planetary scientist offer their views.

The topic in brief

  • Space-exploration programmes in the 1960s powered a new branch of biology called exobiology, which was focused on the search for life beyond Earth.

  • Today, the term exobiology has been almost abandoned, to be replaced by a broader one, astrobiology — the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the Universe1.

  • However, the nature of astrobiology as a distinct scientific discipline has been challenged because of the lack of proof for extraterrestrial life.

  • Also, astrobiology is sometimes criticized as being a buzzword added to certain research topics in fields such as planetary science or biology — for example, in the study of microbes known as extremophiles, which live under extreme conditions.

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Figure 1: Life around us?

EARTH: NASA; MARS: JPL/NASA; GANYMEDE: T. STRYK/JPL/NASA; TITAN: SPACE SCI. INST./JPL/NASA; EUROPA: NSSDC PHOTO GALLERY/NASA; ENCELADUS: JPL-CALTECH/SPACE SCI. INST./NASA

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Antonio Lazcano is a biologist in the Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, 04510 Mexico DF, Mexico.,

    Antonio Lazcano

  2. Kevin P. Hand is a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91103, USA.,

    Kevin P. Hand

Authors
  1. Antonio Lazcano
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  2. Kevin P. Hand
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Antonio Lazcano or Kevin P. Hand.

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Lazcano, A., Hand, K. Frontier or fiction. Nature 488, 160–161 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/488160a

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