From Lineage to Function: Reclassifying Organisms by Thermodynamic Envelopes for the Multi-Spectral Astrobiological Grid (MSAG)

Traditional astrobiological frameworks are heavily constrained by phylogenetic classification and Earth-centric biochemical biases, which limits the capacity to evaluate life forms in unfamiliar or extreme extraterrestrial environments. This paper proposes a paradigm shift: reclassifying terrestrial organisms based entirely on their functional relationships with environmental variables, rather than their evolutionary lineages. This conceptual model operates via three interconnected components: (1) an environmental-functional database of terrestrial life characterized by survival envelopes (temperature, pressure, chemistry, radiation, metabolic inputs); (2) empirical spectrographic and telemetry datasets ingested from advanced space-borne telescopes and ground-based observatories; and (3) a specialized computational synthesis software called the Multi-Spectral Astrobiological Grid (MSAG). The MSAG model acts as an AI-driven simulation engine that ingests planetary metadata, projects environmental variations, and executes compatibility mapping against the functional classifications of Earth-based organisms. By evaluating habitability as a deterministic systems-matching problem, this framework provides an actionable blueprint for automated biosignature interpretation, decoupling astrobiology from historical evolutionary assumptions and optimizing target selection for future deep-space exploration