By
                    Dr. Jian Gong, Research Scientist, School of Computing,
                                            University of Wyoming
Astrobiology is often framed as the search for life elsewhere. But at its core, it asks a deeper question: What is life, how did it arise, and where is it going? This talk explores life across time — from the earliest geochemical and morphological traces preserved in Earth’s ancient rocks to robotic explorers traversing Mars in search of ancient habitable environments, and onward to exoplanets orbiting distant stars. What we have learned is that life appeared on Earth remarkably early, emerging alongside planetary processes rather than standing apart from them. The search for life beyond Earth, therefore, focuses not only on organisms, but on a broader concept known as biosignatures: patterns of chemical disequilibrium, structure, and environmental coupling that reveal life as an environmental and even planetary-scale phenomenon. At a deeper level, life can be understood as a complex adaptive system — self-organizing, self-replicating, inseparable from its surroundings, and capable of processing information through chemistry, metabolism, and evolution. In this sense, nature computes: living systems sense, respond, learn, and transform energy into structure. From cells to ecosystems to global climate feedbacks, life reshapes its environment while being reshaped in return, exhibiting striking self-similarity across scales. As we design increasingly autonomous systems to explore other worlds, we encounter a profound reflection: the principles that allow life to adapt and persist may also inform the systems we build. In this sense, the study of life’s origins becomes inseparable from questions about its trajectory and responsibility in the cosmos. Astrobiology is not only the study of life in the universe. It is the study of how the universe becomes alive — and how it may remain so.