The title says it all:
On the Origin, Evolution, and Demise of an Oxymoron: “astrobiology.”
A Select Time Line, from Elephants on the Moon to Phantom Microbes on Mars, onto Earth’s Bacteria in the Guise of Extraterrestrial Life and the Arsenic Monster of Mono Lake.
Touching on: astrobiology follies, bacteria, chicken pie, exobiology, extremophiles, fossil microbes, Mars, media mayhem, meteorites, moon dust, NASA, phantom microbes, War of the Worlds, and sundry other topics.I especially like his dig at those physicists who assume that all the major problems in biology can be solved by the application of a little physics-derived common sense:
Why is it that biologists never advance hypotheses on problems of physics relating to quarks, gluons, black holes etc., whereas many physical scientists (physicists, astronomers, geologists etc.) have attempted to explain major complex unsolved problems of biology?