Frontiers of Astrobiology: 3rd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

In this third volume on the “Frontiers of Astrobiology”, we aim to bring together a collection of seminal papers that demonstrate the ongoing transcendence of this interdisciplinary field and exemplify the current state of the art in the field. In addition to research articles covering experimental, observational, theoretical, and modeling approaches, we also encourage the submission of papers that focus on novel hypotheses or highlight current challenges or knowledge gaps, as well as long review articles.

Although there are a wide range of topics that encompass this field, relevant examples include: i) What do we know about the physical conditions and the chemical inventory of the early Earth, and how have these evolved over time? ii) What kinds of chemical processes may have occurred on the early Earth and what key steps were necessary for life to evolve (e.g., was there an RNA world, and if so, how did we arrive at it, or move on from it?)? iii) what are the earliest evidences for life on Earth, how it evolved in time, and how robust are they? iv) What are the limits of life on Earth and how does this affect our definition of habitable zones, planetary protection strategies, or panspermia? v) How might extraterrestrial life differ from terrestrial life, and are there certain traits that must be conserved? vi) Are there any special circumstances during the evolution of the Earth and its place in the Solar System that made it especially conducive to the emergence of life? vii) With the next generations of telescopes currently being constructed, how may we begin to constrain whether we think there is evidence of life, biosignatures, or technosignatures on nearby exoplanets? viii) How can we devise better tools to help discriminate against false-positive (or -negative) detections from observations or missions designed to look for indications of biology/life on other worlds? ix) How does our increasing observational prowess provide constraints on whether or not we may be alone in the Universe?

Dr. Christopher Bennett
Guest Editor

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• astrobiology
• astrochemistry
• prebiotic chemistry and the primordial Earth
• origin of, evolution of, and earliest evidence of life
• definition of life
• limits of life / extremophiles
• habitability
• exoplanets
• panspermia
• planetary protection
• space missions
• remote sensing
• advances of analytical instrumentation
• biosignatures / technosignatures