AI Uncovers Evidence of Life in 3.3

The question of when life emerged is one of the most profound mysteries on Earth. Though scientists have a strong idea of when this transformation occurred, a new AI tool is bolstering the existing evidence and offering a completely new way to sniff out signs of primordial life on our planet—and potentially beyond. Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. Thanks to a wealth of indirect evidence from isotopes, stromatolites, and microfossils , scientists believe life emerged around 3.7 billion years ago. But direct evidence—the biochemical record—only dates back about 1.6 billion years. By combining machine learning with cutting-edge chemical analysis, an international team of researchers has detected biosignatures that significantly extend Earth’s biochemical record, corroborating what