Nathalie Cabrol, astrobiologist: It's an achievement of science to admit we don't know what life is'

"Nathalie Cabrol is no ordinary scientist. The astrobiologist holds two records for the highest-altitude scuba dives. She achieved them unintentionally while exploring the lake at Licancabur, a nearly 6,000-meter-high volcano on the border between Chile and Bolivia. Cabrol has spent decades studying Earth to understand the possibility of human life in the extreme conditions of our galaxy. Slight and gray-haired, the explorer wears a vest from the SETI Institute,"

"On the walls of her office, located south of San Francisco, hangs a replica of the golden record traveling aboard Voyager 1 and 2. The message floats more than 20 billion miles from Earth and contains sounds like human laughter, wind, whale songs, and images of the Earth's environment. The most important thing in Cabrol's office is what greets visitors: the Drake Equation, created by U.S. astronomer Frank Drake in 1961 to estimate the number of planets with Earth-like conditions that may exist."

Nathalie Cabrol is a French-American astrobiologist who directs the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute and researches planetary habitability. She holds records for the highest-altitude scuba dives, achieved while exploring Licancabur’s high-altitude lake near the Chile-Bolivia border. Cabrol studies extreme Earth environments to better understand where humans and life might survive elsewhere in the galaxy. Her office displays a replica of the Voyager golden record and the Drake Equation, which estimates hundreds of millions to billions of potentially habitable planets. Cabrol has contributed to NASA missions to Mars and Titan, authored five books, and participated in scientific debates with exoplanet researchers.

Read at english.elpais.com