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Artificial Intelligence Employed In Searching For Extraterrestrial Organisms

Marshall Space Flight Center Press Release
Artificial Intelligence employed in searching for extraterrestrial organisms
and designing new pharmaceuticals

June 11, 1998: Looks may not be            
everything, but they may indicate whether
something was alive - here, or on Mars. To find out if looks and shape can
be a signature of life, Dr. David Noever at NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center plans to conduct what may be one of the world's largest computations.

Noever is developing "Book of Life" technology to identify and classify the
tiniest life forms found on Earth and in samples from Mars. The project
recently started under a grant from NASA's Advanced Concepts Office in
Washington.

When a Mars surface sampler returns in the next century (right), what will
be the best way to sort through the soil and rocks and identify possible
organisms?

Noever has also been recognized for his inventive use of artificial
intelligence to develop new drugs in response to the medical challenges
posed by leukemia, E. Coli and HIV, among other important diseases.Discover
magazine's July issue, in its annual Discover Awards for innovative
technology, selected Noever's In Virtuo program as the top computer software
product.

"Artificial intelligence is the main link between these projects," said
Noever, a research scientist specializing in biotechnology in the Space
Sciences Laboratory at NASA/Marshall. "The computer is the engine that
solves problems depending on what kind of fuel - that is, what kind of
questions - that you put into it."

Remembering the morph man

The idea of recognizing life when you see it may seem obvious, but its
scientific grounding only dates back to Professor D'Arcy Thompson of the
University of St. Andrews in Scotland and his 1917 book On Growth and Form.

"He's the original morph man," said Noever, referring to Thompson and
the image morphing process used to create special effects in movies like
Terminator 2 and The Mask.

Now recognized as the world's first biomathematician, Thompson applied the
concepts of mathematics to the differences of form he observed in various
living things (left; links to larger image). He introduced the idea of
systematically studying organisms by their geometric shape and found that
changes of shape between species could be visualized by altering
mathematical functions. In the days before computer imaging technology,
though, Thompson could only draw figures by hand like the ones here.

"Biological shape now ranks as one of at least four principal criteria in
analyzing the origin of astrobiological samples," Noever said, citing the
importance of Thompson's contribution to astrobiology.

The unusual suspects

Noever plans to use shape to identify life forms just as a detective uses
fingerprints to identify suspects. But sifting through the lineup of
possible forms is an unprecedented task, even for computers. In fact, Noever
expects it will take the largest computation ever.

"Looking for life forms in Mars rocks means analyzing microfossils  
- like potential nanometer-size bacteria  - so
small that 50,000 could fit across the width of a single strand of human
hair," Noever explained.