Scientists have employed a cutting-edge AI technique to analyze ancient rock samples and have detected organic chemical signatures that suggest life existed on Earth around 3.3 billion years ago. This method enables researchers to distinguish between compounds formed by living organisms and those that arose through non-biological processes, achieving remarkable accuracy in its predictions.
The AI-driven system identified potential evidence of early photosynthetic microbes, which implies that organisms capable of producing oxygen may have been present much earlier in Earth’s history than previously believed. By re-evaluating geological samples with this technology, researchers are pushing the boundaries of our understanding of life’s early emergence.
Traditional methods struggle to detect these biosignatures because many of the original biomolecules have degraded over vast spans of time. The AI doesn’t rely on perfectly preserved molecules; instead, it discerns patterns in fragmented chemical remnants—patterns that are often too subtle for human-led analysis to catch.
Beyond reshaping our understanding of early life on Earth, this breakthrough has broader implications for astrobiology. The same AI-based fingerprinting approach could potentially be used on extraterrestrial samples — for instance, rocks from other planets or moons — to look for signs of life elsewhere in the universe.
