Xenobiology is the study of all aspects of life, including intelligence and civilization, that originated somewhere other than Earth. No, this does not mean that you will dissect an alien or that an alien will dissect you. Instead, Xenobiologists exercise their creativity in designing experiments that push the theoretical capabilities of terrestrial life to its absolute limit, and then look to cosmology to determine if similar life-friendly conditions might exist on other worlds. If you need some help to wrap your head around it, Varsity Tutors can refer you to a Xenobiology tutor to help you reach your academic goals.
Here is some of what you can expect to discuss during Xenobiology tutoring sessions:
- How life could exist without oxygen
- How life may survive in seemingly uninhabitable environments
- Where alien life could be found
- The differences between mitochondrial DNA and general DNA
- How ammonia could be a substitute for liquid water
- How a silicon-based organism could exist
Many of the suggestions above fly in the face of terrestrial biology, but terrestrial experiments have provided at least some support that they could prove true. For example, the planet Jupiter has long been dismissed as a viable source of life because it's too cold, but more recent evidence suggests that it has an atmosphere rich in organic compounds and clouds of liquid water. Its moon, Europa, has a full ocean underneath a surface sheet of ice. Life similar to that found on Earth may be possible on either.