That Which We Call Astrobiology, By Any Other Name … The Search for Universal Indicators of Life

We used to call it Exobiology. Now we call it Astrobiology. Perhaps in the future, we will rename it something else. But no matter the name, we start by trying to know about life on Earth, and understand conditions on other planets, and try to map the first one onto the other. Certainly, this is a logical place to start, close to hand on our own homeworld. But where do we go from here? Astrobiology is advancing rapidly along many fronts, and hardly at all along others. Amidst the din of detailed studies applicable to life in our Solar System, and the quest for life amongst the myriad exoplanets appearing in our telescopes, the mandates of science drive us to try to seek general principles, universal explanations, and…most critically of all… implementable predictions. We are a very long way from achieving these goals, but glimpses of them can be seen on our horizon. What is the state of the art along our currently envisioned primary tracks of astrobiology, both well-worn and barely trod? From my perspective as both a practitioner and observer of the vast field of astrobiology, I will explore the landscape of our possible future science in light of our current understanding, albeit it through a glass, darkly. No matter what we think we see at present, the future will undoubtedly greatly surprise us, thus ignominy is the probable fate of all would-be prophets. But the value of the exercise lay in the power of thinking, rather than the score card of future correct predictions.