How Artificial Intelligence Could Help in Finding Aliens on Mars

How Artificial Intelligence Could Help in Finding Aliens on Mars
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At least theoretically, there could be aliens living on Mars. It’s a big universe out there, so who knows what kind of creatures could be lurking on the red planet? Maybe they look like little green Martians with giant eyes and antennas sticking out of their heads. Or perhaps they’re more like cute, cuddly creatures that resemble fluffy teddy bears.

Aliens on Mars might even look like giant, walking potatoes with arms and legs. Imagine how hilarious that would be! They could waddle around the planet, poking their noses into things and munching on space rocks like they’re popcorn. Who knows, maybe they even have little spaceships made out of tin foil that they use to fly around the galaxy.

AI finding alien life is not really a joke

As per InnovationNewsNetwork.com, a group of international scientists has made a remarkable discovery that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to uncover obscured patterns within geographical data, which may indicate the existence of life on Mars. The research involved an ecological study of a 3 km² land area in South America to map the spread of photosynthetic microorganisms. Subsequently, gene sequencing and infrared spectroscopy were used to expose biosignatures. A Machine Learning algorithm was then taught to estimate which macro- and microhabitat types would have links with biosignatures that could signify the existence of alien life on Mars and other regions. The resulting model could locate and identify biosignatures in new data up to 87.5% of the time, reducing the search area by up to 97% to find a positive outcome.

Dr. Freddie Kalaitzis from the Department of Computer Science of the University of Oxford stated:

This work demonstrates an AI-guided protocol for searching for life on a Mars-like terrestrial analogue on Earth. This protocol is the first of its kind trained on actual field data, and its application can, in principle, generalise to other extreme life-harbouring environments. Our next steps will be to test this method further on Earth with the aim that it will eventually aid our exploration for biosignatures elsewhere in the solar system, such as Mars, Titan, and Europa.

The question of whether or not alien life exists in our Solar System is one that has intrigued scientists and the general public for many years. While the search for extraterrestrial life is ongoing, the odds of finding life within our own Solar System remain uncertain.

There are several places in our Solar System that are considered potentially habitable, such as Mars, Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons), and Enceladus (one of Saturn’s moons). These places are believed to have conditions that could potentially support life, such as the presence of water and organic molecules.

The new study was published in Nature Astronomy.


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Even since he was a child, Cristian was staring curiously at the stars, wondering about the Universe and our place in it. Today he's seeing his dream come true by writing about the latest news in astronomy. Cristian is also glad to be covering health and other science topics, having significant experience in writing about such fields.

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