Abstract
Exobiology is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the origins of life on Earth, its evolution and its possible distribution elsewhere in the Universe. This new field appeared around the 1960s, generated by NASA’s Apollo missions. Since then it has experienced a very rapid expansion, far beyond its original purpose, due to new spatial missions (Mars, Titan), associated advances in comparative planetology, and new knowledge provided by chemists, biologists and geologists. However, more immediate than looking for other life forms elsewhere in the Universe, one of the field’s main goals is to understand how life, as we know it now on Earth, was able to arise. For that, we need to know from the geologists what comprised the environment of early Earth, from the chemists how a prebiotic chemistry could have been able to develop, and from the biologists how it has evolved through the last 3.5 billion years. This understanding can only take place through an interdisciplinary community, which has a need to formulate and agree to some common rules before representatives of these disciplines can truly work together.
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Epilogue and Acknowledgments
The interdisciplinary results obtained by the French exobiology community has been possible thanks to the GDR Exobio which gave recently birth to the Société Française d’Exobiologie http://www.exobiologie.fr/, the CNRS (with the Program OPV (Origines des Planètes et de la vie) and EPOV (Environnement Planétaire et Origines de la Vie)) and the CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales). All of them have supported us in the organization of Exobio’N Propriano Summer schools, Rencontres Exobio pour Doctorants (RED’N), and several workshops (Chronology of the history of life on Earth, Biosignatures, Evolution, Defining Life). These summer schools and workshops have given rise to several college textbooks, special issues of reviews and even to an Encyclopaedia of Astrobiology.
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Gargaud, M., Tirard, S. (2011). Exobiology: An Example of Interdisciplinarity at Work. In: Lasota, JP. (eds) Astronomy at the Frontiers of Science. Integrated Science & Technology Program, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1658-2_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1658-2_20
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