File Compression: New Tool for Life Detection? :: Astrobiology Magazine :: Search for Life in the Universe - "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." Very blogworthy. Not only does it introduce me to stromalites, but it shows a good use of file compression. Since craggly layers of rocks are more likely to contain life, they're harder to compress because they have a richer set of data to convey in an image.