What types of scientists become astrobiologists?
[Astrobiology] is inherently multidisciplinary. We founded the Astrobiology Institute [a decentralized organization of collaborating scientists in many fields] on the premise that these fundamental questions on the origin and distribution of life would be best answered by scientists of different backgrounds. We’re trying to encourage scientists who normally wouldn’t talk to each other, like a geologist and a biologist, to work together. We encourage the training of a new generation of students who can work across these discipline boundaries. How do astrobiologists study life on other planets when none has been found yet? There’s only one kind of life that we can study, and that’s life on Earth, so we study terrestrial life that lives in extreme environments to understand what early life was like. We study habitability. For example, when our scientists from Princeton and Indiana University found life in a 2-mile-deep mine in South Africa, that’s the first case of discovering life that i
