File Compression To Detect Life?

Tech writes "Until a few years ago, whenever geobiologists found an ancient rock looked like a fossilized stromatolite, they figured it was a stromatolite, a layered structure built by colonies of microorganisms. But in 1996 it was shown that stromatolite-like structures could be formed through a simple chemical process. So how does one separate the wheat from the chaff, the true stromatolites from the fakes? Frank Corsetti and Michael Storrie-Lombardi think they may have found a way. Their approach is simplicity itself: Create a digital image of the rock; then compress the image file. The more the file shrinks, the more likely it is that life was responsible for building the layers."

Comments

Re:Duplicate Moderatoion

[water-and-sewer]

Also a button where subscribers can post articles, thus eliminating Taco and crew entirely! They're obviously unfit for the job... this many dupes is just plain incompetence. Let the qualified people move in and take over the show, and let the clowns go back to the funny shoes and beep-nose routine.