Astrobiology: Is a PhD a Career Risk?

[Brunnun]

I am probably making a fool of myself asking this here, but having little to no knowledge about the market in Physics (besides what I read in this forum), I would like to know if one is writing a death wish for one's financial life and career when choosing to study Astrobiology.
I began recently to research the field and it interests me greatly, as I am interested in studying Physics, but have a great interest in Biology too. Biophysics is not something I've come to research (although I plan to), but Astrobiology seems so interesting, and seems to use a lot of Biology that I am interested. So, just out of curiosity, are one's chances in the market, after a PhD in Astrobiology, too slim?
Thanks for any response!

 

[axmls]

I'm not exactly speaking from experience, but I'd say you could probably get a job with a PhD in astrobiology. Now, whether or not that job is in astrobiology...

 

[Choppy]

Currently it seems that a lot of the people who work in astrobiology have backgrounds in other fields. Astrobiology strikes me as one of those cross-disciplinary fields where the advantages of drawing together small groups of experts in different areas to work on specific projects outweigh the advantages of having individuals who are trained in the cross-discipline itself - at least at this stage of the game. What that means is that for the foreseeable future, even those rare positions that might be established for people with an expertise in astrobiology are going to be up for grabs from people from more traditional backgrounds. And jobs in academia are extremely tight to begin with.

You might want to ask what marketable skills such a program will give you. Are you going to learn anything handy that can transfer into the professional world?

Another thing to keep in mind is that astrobiology is an entirely theoretical field right now (unless there has been some major discovery that I'm not aware of). If, for example, a soil sample comes back from Mars with clear evidence of microbial life, things might change.

 

[Brunnun]

I understand... Yes, that was my concern axmls, the same one I have with Physics or Astro. But I guess that's kinda normal
Thank you Choppy, hadn't considered that. I think I will wait to finish Undergrad before I really decide anything lol. But do you think one that studies Physics with a minor in Biology, or something like that, has some good markatable skills? I'm trying to approach both my interests

 

[Almeisan]

Would seem like a very interesting field, in 100 years or so.

Right now it's only about extremophiles on earth. Biology is too complex to make untestable theoretical inferences that have any value.

Maybe if synthetic biology really takes off one can try to build alternative forms of life and thus prove they might exist somewhere in the universe.