Astrobiology impression survey for public in Japan

With the discovery of thousands of exoplanets, Astrobiology research has begun for the life in the universe. This research field is regarded as a very broad range of interdisciplinary topics such as astronomy, planetary science, biology, biochemistry, earth science, and engineering. In Japan, the Astrobiology Center (ABC) was established in 2015 as a collaboration between the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), an astronomical research institute, and the National Institute for Basic Biology (NIBB), a biological research institute. ABC is not so large center but has about 10 press releases per year.
On the other hand, the term “life in the universe” is often associated with aliens such as in science fiction. We conducted a survey of 2,000 people in Japan to find out how well the new research field of astrobiology is known in Japan and which fields are considered relevant by the term “”Astrobiology. The results showed that about 80% of the respondents had never heard of the word “”Astrobiology”. We also surveyed the awareness of some of the words that are dealt with in science fiction and other media, and some of the words that seem to be related to astrobiology. Based on this survey, we will discuss ways to further outreach the field of astrobiology as a new interdisciplinary research field.