https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/

http://www.astrobiology.com/

The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution. The model accounts for the fact that the universe expanded from a very high density and high temperature state. after the initial expansion, the universe cooled suffciently to favour the formation of subatomic particles. giant clouds of these primordial element later coalesced through gravity to form stars and galaxies. 

following are the links:

http://science.psu.edu/sciencejournal/archives/june-2013/features/discovering-the-very-early-universe-the-big-bounce-and-dark-energy

http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-origin-of-the-universe.html

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_christian_big_history?language=en

following are the links:-

http://www.123helpme.com/dark-matter-view.asp?id=153324

http://global.jaxa.jp/article/interview/vol22/p2_e.html

https://thescienceclassroom.wikispaces.com/Dark+Energy+%26+Dark+Matter

Albert Einstein first predicted black holes in 1916 with his general theory of relativity. The term "black hole" was coined in 1967 by American astronomer John Wheeler, and the first one was discovered in 1971.

The link of articles- http://www.storybehindthescience.org/pdf/blackholes.pdf

http://m.space.com/24454-stephen-hawking-black-hole-theory.html

Exobiology is considered with life only external to earth while astrobiology takes account of life on earth and elsewhere.

As in all life forms found so far on Earth, the bacteria that use sulfur compounds in their metabolism still use water as the basic solvent (i.e. the fluid medium in which biochemicals are dissolved and thus allowed to interact). There have been speculations about other possible bio-solvents like ammonia, methane, or ethane. Titan, the largest satellite of Saturn, has an atmosphere of nitrogen, methane, and ethane, and (presumably) lots of organic materials on the surface. Under these conditions, it has been speculated that ethane-based life might arise.

We will leave out the gas giants because there are no surfaces for us to live on. If there is any life, it is likely to be below the surface of Mars or below the surfaces of several Jovian moons where liquid water might exist. In no case could we just go there and live: extremely thin atmosphere (or no atmospheres) and cold. Other than that, we could, with protection, live just about anywhere (probably not Venus). On Earth, we can live underwater, and we have people living on the Space Station where there is no atmosphere. So, we could live on the Moon (best to be underground to be protected from meteoroids and solar flares) and on Mars, but, again, only with protection and a way to supply ourselves for living there (air, food, water, and power).

Not directly. Nothing, not even light can escape from a black hole.

On the other hand, you can see some of the fireworks going on near a black hole. As gas falls into a black hole (perhaps coming from a nearby star), the gas will heat up and glow, becoming visible. Typically, not only visible light, but also more energetic photons like X-rays will be emitted by the gas. What we would expect to see (if our telescopes could "zoom-in" enough) would be a glowing rotating disk of material, with the black hole down a the center of the disk. See the above answers

Stellar-mass black holes are typically in the range of 10 to 100 solar masses, while the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies can be millions or billions of solar masses. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, is 4.3 million solar masses.

Astronomers have found a half-dozen or so binary star systems (two stars orbiting each other) where one of the stars is invisible, yet must be there since it pulls with enough gravitational force on the other visible star to make that star orbit around their common center of gravity AND the mass of the invisible star is considerably greater than 3 to 5 solar masses. Therefore these invisible stars are thought to be good candidate black holes. There is also evidence that supermassive black holes (about 1 billion solar masses) exist at the centers of many galaxies and quasars. In this latter case other explanations of the output of energy by quasars are not as good as the explanation using a supermassive black hole. (You see, when matter falls in a gravitational field, its speed and therefore energy, increases. If lots of matter is falling in at the same time, and swirling around the black hole in a disk resembling a traffic jam in a cul-de-sac, then friction between the various pieces of matter will turn much of that speed-energy picked up during the fall into heat, which than gets radiated away. In this way, the matter surrounding a supermassive black hole can radiate more energy per gram of fuel than can be released by any other mechanism we know, including nuclear fusion.)

Gas Giant - A massive planet such as Jupiter or Saturn composed mainly of gases with no solid surface

SETI - The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. SETI projects aim to detect radio or other signals from advanced civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy. dwarf planets. SETI projects aim to detect radio or other signals from advanced civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy.

DWARF PLANETS. They have irrgeular shapes as they are not large enough for gravity to cause a spherical shape. .

2) Searching for other life forms , by studying the conditions of the biological characteristics of various planets.

3) Finding planets where suitable habitable conditions can be found for human beings in the future

Second Edition

University Press, 2013).

Q2) You are sent to find dense and rocky planets. Where in the Solar System should you look?

Q3)What happened during Earth's "Dark Age," or the first 500 million years after it formed? 

Q4) What causes climate to change – and how much can it change?

Q5) Are we alone, or is there life elsewhere in the universe?

Q6) Why do astrobiologists place so much emphasis on searching for life on Mars?

Q7) What is meant by an “Earth-like planet”?

Q8)How many Earth-like planets are there beyond our solar system?

Q9)Why don't you take a picture of one of those newly discovered planets to see if they have life?

Q10)Is the Curiosity Mars Rover searching for life on Mars?

The questioner would give us a fair idea of the amount of awareness regarding astrobiology in the society andthe efforts need to be taken to enhance knoweledge regarding astrobiology.

The law of conservation of energy prohibits the spontaneous formation from nothing. You cannot create or destroy energy or momentum. There is a finite amount of energy in the Universe that is always the same. If the Big Bang theory proposed that everything was created in an explosion, it would violate the most fundamental law of physics. The only reason science can even exist is if we make the assumption that the laws of physics are constant anywhere and everywhere at all times, and this is a quite reasonable assumption. There's no evidence of a period when the laws of physics were not in effect. However, it is impossible to say for sure, because our current physics does not take us back past 10^-43s after the big bang. In that small amount of time, virtually anything can happen.

The big problem is that black hole singularities are not of the same class as the one which produced our universe ( space-like versus time-like) so I would not expect a black hole in another spacetime to produce a universe. Still, people like Stephen Hawkings have speculated that black holes in our universe create universes. Physicist Lee Smolin even speculates that in some larger arena, our universe is similar to others because black holes only happen in universe like ours, and so these universes spawn others like them with very high efficiency.

Within 1 billion years or less.

As astronomers continue to observe more distant galaxies, they are discovering that galaxies with 'solar abundances' seem to be still detectable even at redshifts near the limit of what they can spectroscopically study. Evidently, the first generation of massive stars to form a few ten's of millions of years after the Big Bang, were able to enrich the interstellar or intergalactic medium to nearly solar abundances very quickly. It would then have been possible to form the first planets within a few hundred million years after the Big Bang!

Penn State, Eberly College of Science

other links:

home.web.cern.ch/about/physics/early-universe

http://www.nature.com/nature/supplements/insights/universe/

www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=6676

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1329024184

abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/cosmo/lectures/lec20.html

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCcQtwIwAmoVChMIzqz73ZixyAIVTBqOCh3dPA4W&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.history.com%2Fshows%2Fthe-universe%2Fvideos%2Freconstructing-the-big-bang&usg=AFQjCNFZr7nytx3Wzqd0hGzEzoYn_pBPsw&bvm=bv.104615367,d.c2E

www.space.com/24781-big-bang-theory-alternatives-infographic.html

2. What will the future of the universe be like?

3. How could the universe have been spatially infinite even at the Big Bang?

4. What did the dense matter soon after the Big Bang look like?

5. How far back in time can you see with a telescope?

6. What modifications to Big Bang cosmology have been made to account for all its problems?

Einstein's rejection of the notion that space and time are absolute, based on the observation that the speed of light is independent of the motion of an observer. No matter how fast someone runs toward you with a flashlight, the speed of the light that flashlight emits will always remain the same. From this foundation, Einstein constructed a revolutionary model of gravity and a universe full of unexpected surprises like black holes, gravity waves, time dilation, and the equivalence of mass and energy: E=mc². Astronomers and astrophysicists regularly use the theoretical tools of special relativity to interpret and analyze light.

2.

SINGULARITY

A theoretical point at the core of a black hole where all of the black hole's mass is concentrated. The singularity is compressed so tightly that it is almost infinitely dense. The curvature of space-time is infinite, and the normal laws of physics break down.

3. Relativity, General

"Space tells mass how to move" while "mass tells space how to curve" -- J.A. Wheeler. Einstein created this model, which describes gravity as curvature in space-time, the four-dimensional fabric of our universe. His theory is the best model for gravity so far, and has been confirmed in experiments and observations. According to the theory, regardless of one's point of view (as measured by speed and direction), physical law and the speed of light are unchanged. This implies that measurements made in time and space are not absolute, but relative to your particular point of view or reference frame. General relativity led to concepts and theories such as black hole, parallel universes, worm holes, and space-time.

4. DARK STARS

a starlike object which emits little or no visible light. Its existence is inferred from other evidence, such as the eclipsing of other stars.

 http://www.storybehindthescience.org/pdf/blackholes.pdf

http://m.space.com/24454-stephen-hawking-black-hole-theory.html

Trio of Supermassive Black Holes Found at the Core of Distant Galaxy

Black hole jet diagram

Stephen Hawking says he may have solved a problem that has plagued astrophysics for 40 years: the information lossparadox.

For decades, scientists have argued about what happens to the information relating to the death of a star that forms a black hole. It’s known that nothing, not even light, can escape from a black hole owing to its intense gravitational pull. Quantum mechanics, though, says that information cannot be destroyed; general relativity says it must be. Hence, the information loss paradox.

In the 1970s, Hawking said black holes could emit “information-less photons” via quantum fluctuations – tiny perturbations in space-time – calledHawking radiation, but in 2004 he produced a new theory that claimed information could actually escape from a black hole. How that would occur wasn’t clear, but now he says he has an answer.

“I propose that the information is not stored in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but on its boundary, the event horizon,” he saidtodayat the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Specifically, he says a “super translation” takes place, which is essentially a hologram of the information. It means that information can survive and escape from a black hole at the event horizon, the boundary at which nothing is said to be able to break free. 

They key to this theory is Hawking radiation. Hawking says it can “pick up” information and move it beyond the event horizon. But it’s not all good news; the information is essentially useless. “The information about ingoing particles is returned, but in a chaotic and useless form,” said Hawking. “This resolves the information paradox. For all practical purposes, the information is lost.”

• The surface area of the event horizon of a black hole can only increase, never decrease. This also means that although two black holes can join to make a bigger black hole, one black hole can never split in two.
• The pulL of gravity at the event horizon is constant; it has the same value everywhere on the event horizon.

University of Southampton-

Radio astronomers are watching a previously dormant black hole

wake up in a dramatic display as material falls on to it for the first time for perhaps millions of years.

Is it possible for a black hole to "eat" an entire galaxy?

Q2:
If light cannot escape black holes, how can we take pictures of them?

Q3:
What are black holes made of?

Q4.Does general relativity fail inside black holes?

Q5.

Why does Stephen Hawking say that black holes are not black?

Dark Matter is definitely not antimatter. We know antimatter very well because we have created it in the lab! An antielectron in just like an electron, except with a positive charge. In fact, it is called a positron and is emitted in some radioactive nuclear decays. The mass and spin of a positron are identical to that of an electron. When an electron and positron collide, they annihilate each other in a burst of electromagnetic radiation (E = mc2). Similarly, an antiproton has the same mass and spin as a proton, but a negative charge. Antimatterabsorbs and emits light in exactly the same way as matter, so we know that Dark Matter is not anti-matter.

Recall that we looked at the galaxies receding from each other and played the movie backward to conclude that 13.7 billion years ago the Universe was hot and dense. Given that initial condition, now play the movie forward. There are a bunch of galaxies moving away from each other. As they move away, we expect gravity to slow their speeds the same way that a ball thrown upward slows as it climbs the gravity well. Of course, the galaxies may have been moving so fast in the beginning that they will escape each other’s gravity eventually, but they should still be slowing down as they move apart. In the last 10-15 years evidence has built up that the galaxies are slowing down less than they should based on known physics. Something seems to be counteracting gravity. It seems to be acting like an extra repulsive force. This is something given the name Dark Energy.

One possibility is zero-point or vacuum energy. Quantum mechanics says that a system in its lowest energy state need not have zero energy. Energy curves spacetime just like mass does. So one conjecture is that Λ is just the vacuum energy of quantum fields. There is one huge problem. The natural size of Λ that comes out of quantum field theory is 10120 (yes, this is right, ten to the power 120!!) times what is observed. We will almost certainly need new physics to explain Dark Energy.

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/

http://hetdex.org/dark_energy/dark_matter.php

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/dark-matter/

2. Does dark matter imply dark light?

3. What are some ways to detect dark matter?

4. Can dark matter radiate light like ordinary matter?

5. Can dark matter or energy arise from interactions with other universe?

Along with that basic knowledge of physics,especially mechanics is also required to have a proper understanding of theories mentioned in the above articles.

Black holes can be used to travel into the future only. So far as we know, our universe prohibits traveling into the past.

According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, and to experimental evidence here on earth assembled by Harvard physicists Pound and Rebka, in the presence of a gravitational field, an external observer would see a clock in a strong gravitational field tick more slowly. This is analogous to the famous time dilation effect in special relativity, except that in the 'gravitational redshift' effect no motion between the observer outside the gravitational field and the clock located within the field, is required.

What this means is that if you were traveling into a strong gravitational field and sending out pulses of light every second, an observer watching these signals from a great distance would see the interval between the pulses increase from seconds to minutes and then hours as the field got stronger and stronger.

Black holes are fantastic sources of very strong gravitational fields. What a distant observer would see as your clock got closer to the so-called Event Horizon of the black hole is that the pulse interval would increase without limit from one second to one month and longer. The frequency of the light pulses would also get longer as the light lost more and more energy struggling to get out from the vicinity of the black hole. As your friend finally entered the black hole by passing across its event horizon, the last photon capable of making it to infinity is emitted at almost infinite redshift, meaning that if you originally emitted a gamma ray with an energy of 1000 billion electron volts, buy the time your friend received it far away, it would have lost enough energy to become a radio photon with an energy of 0.00001 electron volts! So, if it took your friend 1000 hours to travel from where you are to the black hole, the last photon he sent you just before entering the black hole, would arrive at your location 1000 hours from now, but when you looked at the interval between the last two pulses he sent, you would see that they are not the one second interval you started out with, but say 1 or 2 minutes or more. But here's the rub. According to your infalling friend, he/she is still sending the pulses out once each second!

In other words, one second to your friend falling into a black hole is several minutes to you and, in essence, your friend is aging more slowly than you and is traveling into the future faster than you are. If he/she could manage to put on the breaks just before crossing over the Event Horizon and escape to rejoin you, you would note that his/her clock reads a much earlier time than your clock. To your friend, only 2000 hours may have elapsed, however, YOUR clock would read perhaps 10000 hours or several weeks have elapsed depending how close to the Event Horizon your friend could get before escaping. The tidal gravitational forces are enormous near small black holes the mass of the sun, so your friend would be shredded into spaghetti within a few hundred miles of the Horizon. For supermassive black holes of several billion solar masses, however, the tidal forces near the Horizon are very small and survivable. This means you could accidently find yourself passing across this one-way barrier, and only realize your mistake when you tried to escape and found it impossible.

In principle, if you could get within a few millimeters of an Event Horizon before escaping, you could essentially time travel years or millenia into the future as measured by outside clocks. According to your clock, however, perhaps only a few hour or days actually elapsed.

Remarkable progress has been made in the past 5 years in organizing the Astrobiology program at NASA, thereby fostering the emergence of an interdisciplinary field with new research opportunities.As astrobiology develops, we expect shifts in paradigms that will require new approaches and different combinations of disciplines to be applied to the age-old questions of our origin and our relationship to the cosmos within which we exist.