NASA Should Expand the Search for Life in the Universe and Make Astrobiology an Integral Part of its Missions, Says New Report

Oct. 10, 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NASA Should Expand the Search for Life in the Universe and Make Astrobiology an Integral Part of its Missions, Says New Report

WASHINGTON – To advance the search for life in the universe, NASA should support research on a broader range of biosignatures and environments, and incorporate the field of astrobiology into all stages of future exploratory missions, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Astrobiology, the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe, is a rapidly changing field, especially in the years since the publication of NASA’s Astrobiology Strategy 2015. Recent scientific advances in the field now provide many opportunities to strengthen the role of astrobiology in NASA missions and to increase collaboration with other scientific fields and organizations. The report finds that these changes necessitate an updated science strategy for astrobiology.

The committee that authored the report found that the lines of evidence we use to look for current and past life on Earth and beyond, called biosignatures, needs expansion. An updated, more sophisticated catalog and framework will be important to enhance our ability to detect both life that might be similar to terrestrial life, and potential life that differs from life as we know it. The latter will be enabled by investigating novel “agnostic” biosignatures – signs of life that are not tied to a particular metabolism or molecular “blueprint,” or other characteristics of life as we currently know it.

A comprehensive framework could also aid in distinguishing between biosignatures and abiotic (non-living) phenomena, and improve understanding of the potential for biosignatures to be preserved (or not) over long planetary time-scales. The report highlights the need to include in situ detection of energy-starved or otherwise sparsely distributed life such as chemolithotrophic or rock-eating life. In particular, the report found that NASA should focus on research and exploration of possible life below the surface of a planet in light of recent advances that have demonstrated the breadth and diversity of life below Earth’s surface, the nature of fluids beneath the surface of Mars, and the likelihood of life-sustaining geological processes in planets and moons with subsurface oceans. A renewed focus on how to seek signs of subsurface life will inform astrobiology investigations of other rocky planets or moons, ocean or icy worlds, and beyond to exoplanets.

As it was "congressionally mandated" I'm hoping we will see plenty of new NASA initiatives... perhaps even some for a SETI project (or even this one!... AstroPulse is already an NSF project.)

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Bondi, Gold, Hoyle said much the same thing many years ago (the steady state universe). Then came the accidental discovery of the cosmic microwave background, which was seen as the proof of the Big Bang (a term coined by Hoyle as a derision). Let us see if the new theories have some experimental evidence.
Tullio
A theory unifying general relativity and quantum field theory is the Sacred Grail of today's physics. One of the attempts is the quantum loop gravity. I don't think a theory inspired by David Bohm has made any progress in this direction.

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I think that all we need to de-bunk this notion is to establish without a doubt that galaxies are, in fact., rushing away from us and one another.

On a related notion of proof of various theories: Then someone needs to state why they think that the acceleration is increasing as what we see at the fringe is what happened 13 billion years ago when gravity may have had not enough time to slow the Big Bang. These far-out galaxies would be expected to be moving faster than the close=in galaxies since they would have the accelerating force of the Big Bang unfettered by gravity acting over a longer time than the ones we can see close in.

We are finite but un-bounded. There was no time before the big bang; time started then. If we are expanding, the universe, itself, is creating more space. --Just as expanding in a 2-dimensional world (think basketball) would be to simply blow it up with more air like a balloon. If there were no 3rd dimension in this 2-dimensional analogy then there is notihng that it can expand into. There is no position North of North in a 2 dimension surface such as our globe.

Looks like NASA already has started.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/will-we-know-life-when-we-see-it-nasa-led-group-takes-stock-of-the-science

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will characterize the atmospheres of some of the first small, rocky planets. Other observatories— such as the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Extremely Large Telescope, both in Chile— are planning to carry sophisticated instruments capable of detecting the first biosignatures on faraway worlds.
Through their work with NExSS, scientists aim to identify the instruments needed to detect potential life for future NASA flagship missions. The detection of atmospheric signatures of a few potentially habitable planets may possibly come before 2030, although whether the planets are truly habitable or have life will require more in-depth study

https://nexss.info/about/about-nexss

I should define time as it might help a visiting ET.

Why would ET be helped by how we on Earth measure time and length?
I'm sure that ET have other units than we have for that but can navigate to us anyway.
Just as we can travel to other places in space regardless if there would ETs on an exoplanet using other units.
However the physical definition of time is more important.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time#Physical_definition
Not how you divide it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_physics#Time_in_cosmology

Just like like the definition of a metre.
It was created after the French Revolution in the 1790s, and was then defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator along the Paris meridian.
Now the metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 second.
Very close to to the originally metre actually and chosed by purpose.
To ET this is of course totally unknown.

SETI institute has already proposed an alternative way to search for ET:)
Sending Google Into Space to Search for Alien Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYd8QiJTi6s