The Compact Color Biofinder is a fluorescent camera capable of detecting minute amounts of biological debris in rocks . It works perfectly from a distance, records videos and quickly scans large areas. It was created by the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
One of Biofinder’s strengths is that it captures the organic fluorescence signals that most biological materials such as fossils, sedimentary rocks, amino acids, microbes, plants… emit.
A research team has published a study in Scientific Reports claiming that the camera is so sensitive that it can accurately detect biological remains of fish fossils from Green River , Wyoming that are about 34-56 million years old.
“The Biofinder is the first system of its kind,” said Anupam Misra, principal instrument developer and researcher at the Hawaii Institute for Geophysics and Planetology in UH’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences and Technology (SOEST). Manoah in a statement. “Currently, there is no other equipment that can detect minute amounts of biodebris in a rock in daylight. Additional strengths of the Biofinder are that it works from a distance of several meters , records video and can quickly scan a large area.”
The camera is not new and it was developed in 2012 by Misra. However, it has been upgraded to a compact, color version.
Detecting evidence of biological waste outside our planet is a great challenge. To get an idea of how the camera would work if used for this purpose, the scientists used it on fish fossils that are about 34-56 million years old . They corroborated the results obtained by laboratory spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and lifetime fluorescence imaging microscopy analyses.
“There are some unknowns regarding how quickly biowaste is replaced by minerals in the fossilization process,” Misra said. “However, our findings confirm once again that biodebris can survive millions of years , and that the use of biofluorescence imaging effectively detects this debris in real time.”
And how could the Biofinder camera help in the search for extraterrestrial life? “If the Biofinder were mounted on a rover on Mars or another planet, we could quickly scan large areas for evidence of past life, even if the organism was small, not easy to see with our eyes, and long dead.” . many millions of years,” Misra said. “We anticipate that fluorescence imaging will be instrumental in future NASA missions to detect organic compounds and the existence of life on other planetary bodies.”
Given the capabilities of the camera, the researchers want to send the Biofinder on some NASA mission .
Referencia: Misra, A.K., Rowley, S.J., Zhou, J. et al. 2022. Biofinder detects biological remains in Green River fish fossils from Eocene epoch at video speed. Scientific Reports. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14410-8
