Scientist Promotes Genetic SETI

Alien message 'may be in our DNA'
Sydney 09 August 2004 09:03

Forget waiting for ET to call -- the most likely place to find an alien
message is in our DNA, according to an expert in Australia.

Professor Paul Davies, from the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at
Macquarie University in Sydney, believes a cosmic greeting card could
have been left in every human cell.

The coded message would only be discovered once the human race had the
technology to read and understand it.

Writing in New Scientist magazine, Davies said the idea should be
considered seriously.

For more than 40 years astronomers have been sweeping the skies with
radio telescopes hoping to catch a signal from an alien civilisation.

So far the search has been in vain. But Davies believes it is wrong to
assume that extraterrestrials who may be hundreds of millions of years
ahead of us technologically will have chosen to communicate by radio.

Leaving artefacts for humans to find once they are sufficiently evolved
-- like the obelisk in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey -- might be a
more attractive strategy, he said.

But ensuring the survival of such an artefact over possibly millions of
years would be difficult.

A better solution would be to incorporate information into the human
genome, allowing it to be copied and maintained over immense periods of
time.

One way to do this might be to deliver alien viruses which could infect
cells with message-laden DNA, said Davies.

Scientists have recently discovered large sequences of "junk" DNA that
contain no genes and appears to be very stable.

"If ET has put a message into terrestrial organisms, this is surely
where to look," said Davies.

A computer could be used to find obvious attention-grabbing patterns
within these stretches of DNA, he said. If a sequence of junk units of
DNA were displayed as an array of pixels on a screen and produced a
simple image "the presumption of tampering would be inescapable".

The DNA code was easily big enough to contain a decent-sized novel or a
potted history of the rise and fall of an alien civilisation.

Davies added: "Trying to second-guess alien communication strategies is
fraught with uncertainty, so we should try everything we can afford. The
truth may be out there somewhere. Or it could be a lot closer to home."
– Sapa-DPA

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=120036

In article
able.rogers.com,
Mad Scientist wrote:

Alien message 'may be in our DNA'
Sydney 09 August 2004 09:03

Forget waiting for ET to call -- the most likely place to find an alien
message is in our DNA, according to an expert in Australia.

I watched a Star-Trek episode about this very thing. Picard and his
archeologist mentor found a message in the DNA of humans, klingons,
vulcans, and romulans that said they were all related to each other.

That was fantasy and so is this lunatic's rant.

Elijah Baley wrote:

In article
able.rogers.com,
Mad Scientist wrote:


Alien message 'may be in our DNA'
Sydney 09 August 2004 09:03

Forget waiting for ET to call -- the most likely place to find an alien
message is in our DNA, according to an expert in Australia.


I watched a Star-Trek episode about this very thing. Picard and his
archeologist mentor found a message in the DNA of humans, klingons,
vulcans, and romulans that said they were all related to each other.

That was fantasy and so is this lunatic's rant.

Man those lunatics are sure spreading themselves around the globe.