Scientists have developed a simple test in the search for alien life, they claim.

The breakthrough helps the search for the “holy grail” of astrobiology: a reliable test that will determine whether there is or was life on other planets.

The discovery uses artificial intelligence to determine with 90 per cent accuracy whether a sample is biological or not.

And it could be used on existing samples, researchers say. That might mean, for instance, that we already have gathered the samples that could tell us whether there is life on Mars.

Scientists hope that their test could be used on samples already collected by the Mars Curiosity rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. The rover has an instrument on board to analyse those samples, and that data could be used in the test.

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