Hunt for life on Mars takes a twist; scientists consider AI tool to detect 'biosignatures'

Scientists have proposed a new way to hunt for life on Mars. A new study has revealed a new way to optimise the search for aliens on Mars by teaching artificial intelligence to detect sites that could contain 'biosignatures'. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a biosignature is any "characteristic, element, molecule, substance, or feature that can be used as evidence for past or present life." However, according to reports, before testing such a tool on Mars or other worlds, they need to be tested on Earth first.

According to a report by Vice, the new deep learning framework was trained to find biosignatures in a harsh Chilean environment that is exposed to high levels of radiation and extremely cold temperatures, creating conditions that are about as close to Mars as you can get on Earth.

According to reports, the AI tool was able to boost the probability of detecting biosignatures in this extreme environment up to 87.5%, making it roughly nine times as effective as random searches for signs of life.

According to Vice, scientists led by Kimberley Warren-Rhodes have come up with ways to address the problem of narrowing down the search to the scale of tiny habitats. Kimberley Warren-Rhodes, an astrobiologist at the not-for-profit SETI Institute, developed “an adaptable framework that couples statistical ecology with deep learning to recognize and predict biosignature patterns,” according to a study. 

According to a study, scientists Warren-Rhodes and her colleagues said, "In the search for biosignatures on Mars, there is an abundance of data from orbiters and rovers to characterize global and regional habitability, but much less information is available at the scales and resolutions of microbial habitats and biosignatures." 

Notably, according to Vice, understanding whether the distribution of terrestrial biosignatures is characterised by recognisable and predictable patterns could yield signposts to optimise search efforts for life on other terrestrial planets.