However, the situation is now beginning to change. Space biology, which has been made possible by the advances in applied astronautics, is probably going to exert a tremendous modifying influence on terrestrial biology. Space biology can solve experimentally the problems involved in maintaining terrestrial life forms in an environment of space flight and under extra terrestrial conditions in general. Moreover, it can ascertain the existence and the characteristics of life in outer space and on the celestial bodies of the solar system. It is eventually bound to deal with the problem of biolo gical adaptation of extraterrestrial organisms to terrestrial conditions. The information gained in this scientific field will no doubt come to have an increasingly strong influence on many general and particular, theoretical and practical, concepts of ordinary biology.
Of course, the new space biology does not supersede or supplant the theoretical astrobiology that was produced much earlier. These are two distinct disciplines which remain mutually related in many complex ways (ways as yet unexplained and undifferentiated one from another).* In the not too distant future, these two disciplines will probably be embodied into some unified astrobiological science, of which they will form organic parts. This astrobiology of the future will exert an increasing influence on the terrestrial life sciences, so that terrestrial biology will find itself being converted into a space science, from the inside, so to speak. At this point we have to mention a third significant factor setting a spaceward trend in biology, which also made its appearance at the beginning of this century.
At that time some ideas were held in scientific circles to the effect that biological phenomena occurring on the Earth were affected to a considerable extent by cosmic processes, chiefly by those associated with solar activity. One of the first to have set forth this concept was Prof. A. L. Chizhevskii, who undertook in 1915 a study of the effects of cosmic and some solar radiations on microorganisms and the growth of living tissues. In1926-1927 he demonstrated the influence of solar eruptions on the functional state of the nervous system. Prof. Chizhevskii (whose work was largely ignored for a long time) was essentially the founder of some individual disciplines which have now become parts of the science which is generally known as agricultural and medical bioclimatology (or biometeorology). This science
is devoted, specifically, to the study of the effect of cosmic factors on plant, animal, and human organisms, and is at present rapidly evolving. Its relative importance is steadily growing, especially since it is intrinsically connected with modern space biology.
All the events outlined above (even omitting some other basic factors) lead to one specific fact: the entire body of the biological sciences—both the purely astrobiological as well as the terrestrial—is manifestly becoming space-orientated. Instead of a narrow, terrestrial, geocentric viewpoint, it is now adopting a cosmic interpretation of the process of life and the laws governing it. "The study of the life forms which may have possibly originated on other planets", writes B.V. Kukarkin, "will probably prove a turning point in all our conceptions of the problem of life itself, its origin and development" (emphasis mine —E. F. ). A revolution of this kind is bound to take place in biology, brought about by the joint action of all the above-mentioned "space-orientating causes".
Our brief survey of the basic trends and features in the space-orientation process of natural science would be incomplete if we were to confine the discussion to theoretical science only. Experimental techniques are also becoming space-orientated, and this aspect should be at least briefly considered.
Experiments performed in widely divergent scientific fields increasingly tend to display a cosmic slant, even though they are carried out on Earth under terrestrial conditions. Thus, for instance, Michelson's experiment (1881), as well as the numerous modified versions of it (up to the present), had the object of measuring the effect of the motion of our planet (considered as a cosmic body) on the velocity of light. This is clearly an unusual kind of experiment, both in its aim and in its method of approach. The same applies to the experiments with cosmic rays, which were started decades ago and are being carried out even now in surface and underground labs, as well as in the atmosphere. The number of such experiments, where cosmic factors or the phenomena produced by them are dealt with on Earth, is growing at a high rate. This tendency shows no signs of declining, despite the fact that the possibility now exists of conducting experimental work directly in space.