An AI to locate traces of life on rocks on Earth and on Mars

Improved knowledge about the conditions under which life arose about 3.8 billion years ago and the recognition of the remarkable resilience of extremophilic microorganisms have sparked new interest in the search for life in the solar system. An international research team, including GEOLAB, GET and LEFE laboratories, has shown that fossil traces left on rocks by microbial consortia can be recognized in images by trained artificial intelligence (AI). This opens new perspectives for the search of biogeomorphological signatures of life on rocks on Mars.

© Dov Corenblit

Sources :

Corenblit D., Decaux O., Delmotte S., Toumazet J.-P., Arrignon F., André M.-F., Darrozes J., Davies N.S., Julien F., Otto T., Ramillien G., Roussel E., Steiger J., and Viles H. (2023). Signatures of life detected in images of rocks using Neural Network analysis demonstrate new potential for searching for biosignatures on the surface of Mars. Astrobiology.

More news

Scientific result

Within a reef – When a cave shows the internal structure of an old reef

Since 2021, as part of a Franco-German cooperation between the University of Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier and the Ruhr-Universität of Bochum, doctoral students from the Geosciences Environment laboratories of […]

14.04.2023

Scientific result

Questioning our knowledge of the chemistry of the early oceans

An international team involving a CNRS-INSU laboratory has determined the isotopic fractionations associated with greenalite, a mineral of the silicate class rich in ferrous iron (Fe2+), and has thus evaluated […]

24.03.2023

Search