On Sunday, a seven-year space mission touched down in Utah, delivering samples from an asteroid millions of miles away called Bennu. Along with specimens currently being collected from Mars and even planetary bodies as far away as Jupiter's moons, these samples can provide clues into the origins of our solar system and life as we know it.
In a new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report a new technique for analyzing such samples that could help identify whether pieces of asteroids or other materials collected from objects in our solar system hold the building blocks of life. After teaching an artificial intelligence program how to identify 134 carbon-bearing samples of objects on Earth, including living things like a grain of rice or a human hair and nonliving things like lab-made chemical compounds, the research team found AI could successfully identify whether new objects were biotic or abiotic — a.k.a. living or nonliving — with 90% accuracy.
