Alien Flowers Seeded in a Cosmic Garden
[6] - Is DNA an Extraterrestrial Terraforming Technology?
Today our earth is a blossoming garden of delights and wonders. Life took root in this world very early on in geological history. The detailed genetic analysis strongly indicates that the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) of all living organisms lived around 4.4 billion years ago. This planet clearly offered very fertile soils from which organic forms could sprout.
We look with wonder at the beautiful chaos of the living world. Marvelling at the myriad living forms that have emerged to turn their faces, leaves and caps towards the illuminating sun. There is certainly order interwoven into mother nature’s chaos, but it feels secondary and limited.
It is widely believed that when we look at the dense emerald-green jungles of the Amazon basin we are witness to nature in all its wildest glory. As scientists began to take a closer look at the distribution of Amazonian flora it became obvious there was an overabundance of human food staples.
Separate studies have identified evidence of ancient humans practising a form of agriculture known as horticulture or permaculture in the Amazonian rainforest 4500 years ago. In some regions, human agricultural activities trace back even 10,000 years ago. To the untrained eye, the human modification of the seemingly pristine rainforest is undetectable.
An Intelligently Designed Garden?
Let’s zoom out further and regard the entire terrestrial biosphere from a similar perspective, are we really looking at an entirely unaided flowering of chance evolutionary processes?
The entire interwoven ecosystem of life in our world could be something akin to the Amazon, a garden once carefully tended now feral, with life escaping its initial cultivation to run wild.
Conversely, it may be that just as the jungles are primarily the product of random growth, most organisms might be products of churning chaotic selection processes while some have experienced skilful pruning and grafting.
The garden of earth premise outlined above is not without scientific merit, but don’t take my word for this, let’s hear from the esteemed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins:
Ben Stein: “What do you think is the possibility that Intelligent Design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in Darwinian evolution.”
Prof Dawkins: “Well, it could come about in the following way. It could be that, eh, at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilization evolved by probably some kind of Darwinian means to a very, very, high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Ehm, now, that is a possibility and an intriguing possibility, and I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the um detail, details, of biochemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer.
As it stands we have no way to know whether life began randomly and spontaneously on earth through abiogenesis. It may well be that the first simple organism arrived from space, whether by natural mechanisms (panspermia) or intentional seeding (directed panspermia).
The building blocks of life have all been found carried in meteorites and comets. Distant exoplanets may well have flourished with biology long before earth’s biosphere emerged. It is notable that life took hold here early, perhaps just one hundred million years after the planet formed, which seems to favour panspermia.
Directed Panspermia
One research project on the origins of DNA applied the principles of Moore’s Law, the understood rate of expansion for information processing capabilities increases over time. The researchers began with the understanding that genetic complexity doubles every 376 million years and then walked the process backwards. The team’s tentative conclusions suggested that DNA emerged 10 billion years ago. That would make DNA 5.5 billion years older than earth.
Francis Crick, the molecular biologist famous for his part in revealing the structure of DNA, proposed a directed panspermia model. Francis Crick alongside the chemist Leslie Orgel argued that the complexity of the DNA code required a longer time to emerge than earth could have allowed. Simply put, they suggested intelligent aliens sent the code of life to earth.
Directed panspermia is still widely viewed with extreme scepticism within the scientific community, even hostility. However, panspermia is at least debated, and peer-reviewed papers are occasionally published.
Scientists seem to reserve their full ire for any suggestion that human beings themselves might be the product of skilful tending, grafting, and hybridising. There is extreme hostility towards the belief our hypothesized extraterrestrial gardeners really exist.
It is scientific heresy to argue humans might be the equivalent of a prized blue rose, our civilization and ideologies mere trellis put in place to guide the direction of our evolutionary stem. Modern humans firing rockets into space could simply represent our flowering after an aeon of careful pruning.
“I’ve just ended an email: ‘There is no need for, and no indication of, any alien involvement in human origins.’ Sigh.”
– Professor Alice Roberts, Archaeologist
Popular scientists like Professor Alice Roberts are so certain that there is no validity to intelligent design or alien intervention that they offer kneejerk dismissals. The reality is they have spent no time assessing whether supporting evidence exists. The default position seems to be not to bother tackling the issue scientifically because they already know there’s nothing to it!
A DNA WOW Signal
Thankfully a tiny number of academic researchers are willing to apply the scientific method to alien intervention claims. Physicist Vladimir shCherbak and astrobiologist Maxim A. Makukov, scientists associated with the human genome project, investigated evidence of artificial messages embedded in the DNA code.
In their paper, The WOW Signal of the Terrestrial Genetic Code, shCherbak and Makukov argue that “arrangements of the code reveal an ensemble of arithmetical and ideographical patterns of the same symbolic language”.
Perhaps the most profound conclusion offered by the genetic WOW signal study is the declared finding of “readily recognizable hallmarks of artificiality, among which are the symbol of zero, the privileged decimal syntax and semantical symmetries”.
The genetic WOW signal study generated a lot of media interest and predictably prompted considerable academic pushback. I would encourage you to explore the criticisms as in my understanding there were potentially some flaws in their methods that should be considered.
The scientific duo returned with a second paper, SETI in vivo: testing the we-are-them hypothesis, that added additional weight to their claims of a hidden signature in the DNA code.
Irrespective of your views on the validity of all their conclusions, two quotes from the study really stand out as helpful to us here:
"It has been repeatedly proposed to expand the scope for SETI, and one of the suggested alternatives to radio is the biological media"
"Genomic DNA is already used on Earth to store non-biological information. Though smaller in capacity, but stronger in noise immunity is the genetic code. ... 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."
Vladimir shCherbak and Maxim A. Makukov, The WOW Signal of the Terrestrial Genetic Code
You might be wondering where the famous SETI institute is in all of this, after all, they are the largest and best-funded organisation dedicated to searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. With the growing recognition that scientists should be taking seriously the possibility of alien signatures in our DNA surely we can rest assured the boffins over at the SETI Institute will be ahead of the game.
I think we should check in with the SETI Institute’s senior astronomer, Dr Seth Shostak.
Mick West & Seth Shostak
Unfortunately, I don’t have a hotline to the SETI Institute’s main man. Luckily, I know someone who does, the renowned scientific sceptic and conspiracy debunker, Mick West. Through a fortuitous situation, I was able to have Mick West pitch the hot potato of alien intervention directly into the lap of our SETI astronomer friend.
The exchange below is taken from Mick West’s Tales From The Rabbit Hole podcast, Episode 22 - Seth Shostak: SETI Senior Astronomer on the Search for ETs, UFO “Disclosure”, and Storming Area 51:
Mick West: “Would you look into a genomic wow signal from prehistoric ET visitation? I guess this is the idea that there would be markers in the human genome that indicated some kind of alien visitation a long time ago. Something, something that’s not natural in the genome, is that something you have even thought about?”
Seth Shostak: “Well, a lot of people have thought about it, actually, and it was suggested at a conference I was at in Australia by Paul Davies. He's now at the Arizona State University, a very clever physicist and he said, you know, we should just put a grad student on it and just. I mean, we’ve sequenced the human genome now. And just, you know, look for, look for, indeed, I don't know, mathematics or in any case non-random stuff in there. There's all this junk DNA and maybe it's in there. Now, as far as I know, he hasn’t found a grad student willing to do it yet.”
“I don't know what the deal is, I mean ah, I don't think that's a bad idea, but to begin with, junk DNA is now considered not quite so junky, it does have some effects. And then there are all sorts of there’s a whole field of epigenetics which has kinda reshaped our thinking about the DNA and the genetics. So how does that work?”
“But, I mean, it's not, maybe not a bad idea, but I honestly don’t think that if aliens have visited Earth a long time ago, they said, OK, Zork, you know we're going to leave, but who knows, 100 million years from now, maybe some intelligent species will arise and we need to leave a calling card to let ‘em know that we came to visit their planet. So, what are your plans for doing that? Well, we could just leave a thumb drive here, you know, buried in concrete. Ah no, well I'll tell you what we can do you know put something in orbit, they'll find that eventually, right? No, no. Let's engineer some organisms here that are going to lead to those critters and put it into the DNA. Yeah, but Zork, DNA mutates all the time. That's called evolution. We're going to lose the message now.”
“Well, I mean. It just doesn't sound like to me the right way to do anything, but I suppose if someone wants to look into it then we can go there for sure, saying that, I think it's a two-week project actually. And we could just do some statistical analysis of the data or something like that.”
Ah, so now I understand better, alien intervention in our origins is a reasonable scientific premise, potentially falsifiable. Alien manipulation of terrestrial DNA is a possibility that noted experts believe we absolutely should, and already could, be looking into.
The real roadblock to genomic SETI is that scientists can’t be bothered to put two weeks of effort into investigating the possibility. Because, you know, Zork, little green men, yada yada yada.
It is important to note that Dr Shostak makes a false claim in stating that any signs of modification would be lost. The reality of DNA’s potential for information stability is better reflected in the quotes from shCherbak and Makukov.
We can hear much the same position on DNA’s stability espoused by the very scientist mentioned by Dr Shostak, Professor Paul Davies.
“If you tinkered with genomes a hundred million years ago, the traces of that would still be with us today.”
– Professor Paul Davies, Astrophysicist
For additional context just consider that the SETI Institute has been searching for alien intelligence for just under 40 years, they currently utilise a little over $20,000,000 per year, according to the financial statement on their website. While they have done a lot of interesting scientific work, there are no indications they are any nearer to identifying a single hint of alien intelligence.
Despite this stark failure to achieve their stated aims, the SETI Institute is unwilling to task an intern or volunteer grad student to the inexpensive task of a few weeks looking into potential genomic signals of alien intelligence. If I was a major financial donor this revelation would leave me furious.
Unlike the vaunted experts in the SETI field, we will take a serious look at the astonishing possibility that an alien intelligence intervened in our genetic origins. It’s time to steamroller right over the biased ideological roadblocks erected around this topic. We shall go where the majority of our scientific ‘experts’ fear to tread.
Dr Carl Sagan’s Alien Base
"The statistics presented earlier in this paper suggest that the Earth has been visited by various galactic civilizations many times (possibly ~104) during geological time. It is not out of the question that artifacts of these visits still exist, or even that some kind of base is maintained (possibly automatically) within the solar system to provide continuity for successive expeditions."
- Dr Carl Sagan, Direct Contact Among Galactic Civilizations by Relativistic Interstellar Spaceflight.
The famous science communicator and sceptic, Dr Carl Sagan, calculated there was a high probability extraterrestrial interaction had occurred in the past. Sagan also posited the idea we might even have active alien bases in our solar system. Certainly, if an extraterrestrial intelligence seeded or modified life on earth, they would have some interest in monitoring what happened to it afterwards.
Alcheringa on Genetic Manipulation of Early Hominins
Until here we have been talking fairly generally about the premises of genomic SETI research, the good, the bad and the ugly. However, let’s remember that our investigation starts from a place of some specificity. We might have an edge over any other interested researchers if the Alcheringa sentinel probe is legitimate and provided truthful guidance.
“The Earth itself was a hostile environment for the star people, so they planned to modify themselves genetically to be able to spread across the planet.”
“The star people decided to genetically engineer the up-standing ape-like creature. Genes from the star people were intermingled with the animal man embryo, then implanted into the females. The babies were born with a larger skull, a little less hair, which went on then to evolve so that the more children born, the less hair was manifested.”
“Many of us had been artificially impregnated with our own seed that had been genetically modified to produce a new being, able to cope with the sun and atmosphere of this place.”
“Here were survivors from a star ship, cast onto Earth, attempting genetic engineering from a first aid kit... Some of them don’t turn out quite right, some of them do.”
“I had remembered seeing the birth of a genetic experiment gone terribly wrong.”
“The human has been created genetically from the up-standing ape-like creature and the star people.”
How would extraterrestrials colonise alien worlds?
NASA is currently talking about using genetic engineering technology to reshape future astronauts to better suit dangerous space environments. It makes sense that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization would modify its colonists to otherwise hostile environments. This use of genetic engineering for colonisation is exactly what the Alcheringa information suggests.
To my knowledge, the Alcheringa sentinel’s discussion of using genetic engineering technology in colonisation is the first time this logical requirement has ever appeared in an alleged contact transmission. We hear a lot about people claiming aliens walk the earth but nothing on how that would be possible, considering all planets vary in the atmosphere, radiation levels and gravity.
We learn that the colony ship had been blown to pieces before this genetic reshaping of the crew could be completed. The few survivors that made it down to the surface were being fried by solar radiation, choking on the air and suffering poisoning when imbibing the food and water. The long-term outlook for the survivors was grim.
Somewhere in the ensuing acceptance of defeat and despair, the beings realised they could colonise the resident humanoid species instead of the planet itself. If they reprogrammed a few segments of the code of life, and perhaps spliced in a little new information, they might birth a race more like themselves.
With some careful ideological and philosophical shepherding the modified hominins could then be encouraged to act as suitable stand-ins for the colonists themselves. The new species would complete the original mission objectives.
The source information provides essential guidance for what we should be looking for as supporting evidence of the purported genetic intervention. Potentially there could be signs of alteration to human foetal development and maturation processes. We would also expect evidence of gene splicing and other genetic anomalies that stand out in humans when contrasted against our primate cousins.
The biggest question to consider here is whether you are ready to process any ontological and existential shock that positive results could bring with them.
“If you’re not ready to find exceptional things, you won’t discover them. Of course, every argument needs to be based on evidence, but if the evidence points to an anomaly, we need to talk about an anomaly.”
-Professor Avi Loeb, Harvard University
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You would think Seth Shostak would be open to other avenues for investigating potential alien life given that he hasn't accomplished anything in 20+ years doing it his way at SETI. What a joker.
what about the life that spans of your garbage?