A star among the stars: Voyager I leaves the solar system

I was told there would be no math.

 

Caught the tail end of a Through the Wormhole episode the other day that made the argument that DNA is a code that was injected into primal earth by aliens as a sort of transmittal communication seed. The theory is that the make-up of DNA is so complex, yet reads like a code, and as humans get smarter and smarter we'll eventually figure out what the code means and use it to contact our alien forefathers, who will then know it's time to return to Earth because their seeds have developed super intelligence.

Pretty cool theory.

Edit: More on that theory:

http://io9.com/scientists-say-an-alien-code-may-be-hidden-inside-our-d-472157262

 

Wasn't that, sort of, the plot of "Prometheus"?

 

It was a plot of a Star Trek: Next Generation, too.

 

I haven't seen "Prometheus" but I did see the ST:TNG episode, where the premise is that humanoid-like beings visited many worlds ages ago and interbreeded with native species, the eventual evolutionary result being that many species in the 'present-day' ST universe (i.e. human, Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans) have many genetic and appearance similarities.

Many other sci-fi continuities include the 'panspermia' concept as an easy way to explain the apparently far-fetched coincidence of so many worlds having humanoid-appearing species.

The thing is, a sufficiently-advanced species wouldn't even have to go to the messy work of actually breeding with the local livestock -- or even building ships to meet them flesh-to-flesh. A sufficiently-advanced species in biotechnology could probably engineer a virus which would infect a native species and insert its own DNA into the host organism's chromosomes, creating a new species with (presumably) the genetic attributes the "advanced" species wanted to perpetuate.

Instead of sending a humungous Starship Enterprise with zillions of tons of life support equipment, all they would have to do would be to send a Voyager-size (or smaller) probe which could drift unattended for ages at near-absolute zero, with a frozen test tube full of the genetic-adapting virus waiting only to crash land on a planet with some kind of life suitable to serve as a host, thaw out, and do its stuff.

It would be a very indirect and really subtle form of biological/genetic warfare: By the time any 'victim' species understood what had happened, the 'alien' DNA would have been part of its own genetic makeup for eons.

Hell, we could probably do it, or something very much like it, right now.

 

The answer to everything lies in pi. </CarlSagan>