About this episode

Mike discusses a new study with Dr. Anirudh Prabhu on using machine learning to detect signs of ancient life in rocks.

Guest: Dr. Anirudh Prabhu Mike brings aboard Dr. Anirudh Prabhu to discuss an exciting new study of theirs that uses machine learning trained on organic chemical data to detect the "whispers" of life—including photosynthetic life—in ancient rocks. This exciting technique could one day be used to seek out new life on strange new worlds. Mike & Anirudh's paper, "Organic geochemical evidence for life in Archean rocks identified by pyrolysis–GC–MS and supervised machine learning": https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2514534122 Follow us on Bluesky! Mike: https://bsky.app/profile/miquai.bsky.social Anirudh: https://bsky.app/profile/anirudhprabhu.bsky.social

People in this episode

Host: Mike

Guest: Dr. Anirudh Prabhu

Topics covered

• machine learning
• ancient rocks
• photosynthetic life
• geochemistry
• astrobiology

Keywords

• machine learning
• ancient life
• geochemical evidence
• photosynthesis
• Archean rocks

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: PNAS

Books & works: Organic geochemical evidence for life in Archean rocks identified by pyrolysis–GC–MS and supervised machine learning

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