Why kids will one day learn astrobiology before their ABCs

Astrobiology for kids? What is astrobiology? Why is it so important? Read on to find out, and gain a deeper appreciation of your place in the Universe that you can share with your curious child.

As babies grow and develop they build models about the world around them and build up experience of what life is. They learn about everyday objects, basic actions, other animals. Pretty soon they are recognising letters and singing along to the alphabet song. But one day astrobiology will find a missing piece to the puzzle of life will be so important that children will learn astrobiology well before their ABCs. 

What is astrobiology?

Astrobiology is the study of life from a cosmic perspective.

Why is this important?

Let’s start by taking a cosmic perspective on our own lives and look to the night sky.

The vastness of space

Go outside and look up on a dark, clear night and you will see a sky plastered with stars, all twinkling at you from light-years away. If you sweep your gaze overhead you will see a milky band arching over you. You are looking into the plane of our galaxy. What goes through your mind?

Image credit: Travis Grossen

Most likely you’ll feel some sense of awe. It is a humbling experience to feel the vastness of space. What you may not think about is how incredibly lucky you are to experience it.

Let’s dwell on that a while for some additional perspective on our place in the Universe. It will help you to fully appreciate the importance of astrobiology.

Why so lucky?

Aside from living on a planet at just the right distance from just the right star and being a member of a species capable of contemplating the Universe, plus enjoying access to an enormous body of knowledge on it, you are the product of nearly 4 billion years of evolution and trillions upon trillions of ancestors that managed to survive long enough to pass their genes on to the next generation. You can check out what some of your ancestors may have looked like by watching the video below.

For every one of quadrillions of choices your ancestors made — swim towards that light or away from it, run from that spooky shadow in the bushes or stay in the open and enjoy the tasty food, take this job in the country or that one in the city, finish this cup of tea and drive to work or skip the tea and catch the bus  — another potential person (or even another creature entirely) could be standing in your place right now.

If they hadn’t made exactly those choices, you would not exist.

Just like all the quadrillions of people that could exist in the future, but never will.

And yet here you are. You exist. You are here, contemplating your own existence. Possibly, drinking tea.

Take a moment to let that sink in, celebrate, then thank your lucky stars, as well as all your billions of ancestors for making the choices that meant that you are the one that now gets to gaze up at the night sky.

And because of the addition of your choices, on top of those quadrillion others, your child also gets to enjoy the same privilege. 

The potential of life is mind-blowing

You are just one of more than 7.5 billion people on Earth, each with their own unique evolutionary history and trillions of ancestors.

That is astounding enough.

Humans, though, are just a small part of the life on Earth (with a disproportionate effect on the rest — more on that in a later post). Take a look at the chart below: humans are low on both the abundance and biomass scale compared to many other branches of life. 

The diversity and abundance of life on Earth is staggering. Have a look at a few of the amazing creatures we have here, from ocean-dwelling giants to microscopic bacteria: