RESEARCHERS JOIN 'MISSION TO EARLY EARTH'

In what seems a cross between Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth and H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, University researchers are burrowing deep underground into the most ancient regions of the globe to find the lost world where life began.

Called "The Mission to Early Earth," the endeavor is part of the NASA astrobiology program. Literally meaning "star life," astrobiology is a component of NASA's effort to look for life beyond Earth.

"If we're going to look for evidence of life on Mars or beyond, then we have to know what we're looking for," says Ariel Anbar, professor of earth and environmental science. "There is so much we don't know about the origin and early evolution of life. What chemicals must be present? What kind of atmosphere helps life start? What are the factors we haven't even thought of?"

"If you want to understand the probability of life being elsewhere, what that life might be like, and what the course of evolution might be, then you should be studying the only planet known to harbor life, and study the history of that planet."

A geoscientist, Anbar is a member of one of NASA's astrobiology teams, and last fall, he returned with his group from an exploratory mission in Australia to scout sites in parts of the Earth's crust that are nearly 2.5 billion years old-more than halfway back to the planet's birth-a time when the only life on the planet was bacteria.

NASA hopes to launch space telescopes in the near future that will be able to pick out light from planets around distant stars. But what kind of telescope NASA builds will depend on what scientists are looking for-should it be tuned for an oxygen atmosphere or methane, or something else entirely?

The answer will come from work like that of Anbar and his colleagues.

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