Is An Alien Message Embedded In Our Genetic Code?

[seemslikeadream]

Is An Alien Message Embedded In Our Genetic Code?
Apr 1, 2013 11:27 AM ET // by Ray Villard

The answer to whether or not we are alone in the universe could be right under our nose, or, more literally, inside every cell in our body.

Could our genes have an intelligently designed “manufacturer’s stamp” inside them, written eons ago elsewhere in our galaxy? Such a “designer label” would be an indelible stamp of a master extraterrestrial civilization that preceded us by many millions or billions of years. As their ultimate legacy, they recast the Milky Way in their own biological image.

Vladimir I. shCherbak of al-Farabi Kazakh National University of Kazakhstan, and Maxim A. Makukov of the Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, hypothesize that an intelligent signal embedded in our genetic code would be a mathematical and semantic message that cannot be accounted for by Darwinian evolution. They call it “biological SETI.” What’s more, they argue that the scheme has much greater longevity and chance of detecting E.T. than a transient extraterrestrial radio transmission.

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Writing in the journal Icarus, they assert: “Once fixed, the code might stay unchanged over cosmological timescales; in fact, it is the most durable construct known. Therefore it represents an exceptionally reliable storage for an intelligent signature. Once the genome is appropriately rewritten the new code with a signature will stay frozen in the cell and its progeny, which might then be delivered through space and time.”

To pass the designer label test, any patterns in the genetic code must be highly statistically significant and possess intelligent-like features that are inconsistent with any natural know process, say the authors.

They go on to argue that their detailed analysis that the human genome (map here) displays a thorough precision-type orderliness in the mapping between DNA’s nucleotides and amino acids. “Simple arrangements of the code reveal an ensemble of arithmetical and ideographical patterns of symbolic language.” They say this includes the use of decimal notation, logical transformations, and the use of the abstract symbol of zero. “Accurate and systematic, these underlying patterns appear as a product of precision logic and nontrivial computing,” they assert.

ANALYSIS: Are We Living in a Hologram?

This interpretation leads them to a farfetched conclusion: that the genetic code, “appears that it was invented outside the solar system already several billions years ago.” This statement endorses the idea of panspermia, the hypothesis that Earth was seeded with interstellar life. It’s certainly a novel and bold approach to galaxy conquest if we imagine this was a deliberate Johnny Appleseed endeavor by super-beings.

However, there are other possibilities too. I’ve previously written about the far-out notion that the universe we observe was built just for us and exists inside a computer program (with apologies to The Matrix film trilogy). Therefore the idea that some programmer somewhere wrote the genetic code for life in their model universe is consistent with the authors’ suggestions.

Biological SETI inevitably smacks head-on into an idea that is completely antithetical to science: the concept of intelligent design (ID). The proposition of ID is that our biology is so complex it must have been engineered by a higher power.

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To date, ID has been nothing more than biblical creationism in sheep’s clothing. Christian fundamentalists use it to push the teaching of creationism in schools as an alternative to “secular” evolution. (Which, by the way, is now being battled in school systems in four states.)

Can the claim of an alien signature in our genetic code be any more believable, or provable than biblical ID?

We know so little about the origin of life on Earth it seems presumptive to identify genetic structure that supposedly defies a natural explanation. Even the discovery of life elsewhere in the solar system would not provide an independent test of this idea. Panspermia could have naturally occurred among the planets and moons.

And, even if the genetic code is ultimately considered the handprint of an extraterrestrial grand designer, then who designed the designer?

The “Wow! signal” of the terrestrial genetic code

[FourthBase]

Great.

Three provisional middle fingers:

1. Fuck a holographic universe, that shit is nihilism on a stick.
2. Fuck fundamentalist Christian creationism, that shit is a child's caricature wielded like fasces.
3. Fuck aliens from another galaxy or dimension.*

* Unless...

It’s certainly a novel and bold approach to galaxy conquest if we imagine this was a deliberate Johnny Appleseed endeavor by super-beings.

...i.e., distant future humans from a parallel timeline with inconceivable porting technology, some of whom perhaps appear to be utterly foreign creatures from far away after eons of natural/sexual/artificial selection, all of whom are interested in our earth and especially in this general period of our cultural evolution because it is for all of them the birthplace of their worlds and cultures, and perhaps some cosmic dimensional clusterfuck erased this earth or its history or us and so maybe one or some of them had to re-seed the earth billions of years ago with us, now, as the telos, essentially giving birth to themselves in some seemingly impossible loop. In which case, middle finger #3 is retracted and substituted with...



(EDIT) p.s. Also, in that scenario, the second middle finger would be more like...



Mezza mezza.

But, still, bird #1 would remain stiff, at full-mast.

[DrVolin]

Uh, isn't this a Voyager episode? Or Next Gen maybe? My memory is muddy.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Jokes aside, the scientific answer is Yes.

Yes, our genetic code features an embedded message that is alien in the best and truest sense. I do agree with the breathless hype of our Ray Kurzweils and our Craig Venters on this much: the quest to understand the human genome will teach us more about ourselves than we think possible.

Those dudes are more right they know on that much. That will be just as true in 100 years, too, after we've cycled through a centuries worth of paradigms (which is what? five? let's hope that shit accelerates too!) and we still keep learning about ourselves...just, you know, not what we expected, predicted, or wanted. The alien will continue to elude us.

[justdrew]

Uh, isn't this a Voyager episode? Or Next Gen maybe? My memory is muddy.

here you go...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29

although directed panspermia was first touched on in this TOS episode:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Tomorrow

a really good one btw

[DrVolin]

Thank you

[NaturalMystik]

Is An Alien Message Embedded In Our Genetic Code?

Wouldn't surprise me. I always felt that DNA was code, like a computer program. If the code was engineered, then there would definitely be some signs or signatures in the code.

There was some research done a few years back on DNA and specifically Junk DNA. Their conclusion was Junk DNA were much like "comments" that are used in a piece of computer code. You basically have sections of code that aren't active, but describe the next section of code. Another interesting conclusion they had was that where sections of dna could be linked to disorders, the junk dna had not been terminated properly. So in computer code when you are inserting comments, there are usually some symbols at either end of the commenting, to set it aside from active code, it's easy to forget a semi;colon or other causing a bug in the block of code.

So who programmed the programmer, the chicken or the egg?

[DrVolin]

So you're saying the aliens use a crappy compiler?

[NaturalMystik]

Or suck at Copy/Paste

[DrEvil]

When/if they decode the junk it will probably read something like:
"Grow your Snorgblax 10%! Guaranteed! Make your partner-spouse squirm with pleasurable excretions! Blorg 1800-Snark NOW!"

[Jerky]

Dr Evil, your comment, paired with your avatar, is priceless.

[82_28]

I would say yes. Yes there is. It is embedded in everything. Do I or we know for sure? Absolutely not and therein is the clue. So, yes. I agree that there is an "alien" hidden code. The message is a message that cannot be disagreed with because of the fact that it is intrinsic.

[Nordic]

Intelligent design? Don't tell me those Christian nutjobs are right.

[hanshan]

...

So you're saying the aliens use a crappy compiler?

&

Or suck at Copy/Paste

...

[FourthBase]

Intelligent design? Don't tell me those Christian nutjobs are right.

Eh. If the code is there, then they're not right, per se. More like...

Mezza mezza.

And still ultimately a bunch of fasces-wielding idiots.