FROM PANSPERMIA TO BIOASTRONOMY, THE EVOLUTION OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF UNIVERSAL LIFE

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, ideas related to the possibl e origin in space of bioorganic molecules, or seeds, or even germs and organisms (and how they reached the Earth) included the Panspermia th eory. Based on the idea of the eternity of life proposed by eminent ph ysicists - such as Arrhenius and Kelvin - 'Panspermia' is mainly divid ed into two branches: lithopanspermia (transport of germs inside stone s traveling in space) and radiopanspermia (transport of spores by radi ative pressure of stellar light). We point out some arguments to help to understand whether 'Panspermia' could exist nowadays as the same th eory defined one century ago. And we wonder about the kind of evolutio n 'Panspermia' could have undergone during only a few decades, This po ssible evolution of the 'Panspermia' concept takes place in the framew ork of the emergence of a new field, Bioastronomy. We present how this discipline has emerged during a few decades and how it has evolved. W e consider its relationship with the progression of other scientific f ields, and finally we examine how it is now included in different proj ects of space agencies. Bioastronomy researches having become more and more robust during the last few years, we emphasize several questions about new ideas and their consequences for the current hypothesis of 'Panspermia' and of universal life.