I posted this comment on the "Longest Running Evolution Experiment" thread
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"if it transpired that those microbes were seeded by aliens"
A bit of a segue. If we assume that the first microbes with RNA and DNA on earth were seeded by aliens: then you can increase the number of "experimental explosions in a timber yard" by 4 hundred billion stars in a galaxy times a 100 billion galaxies times the ten billion years the universe existed before the solar system was born. (Maybe we need to multiply by trillions of universes which may exist, it could be that life only exists in one in a trillion universes, but then of course if we weren't here we wouldn't be thinking about it or discussing it.)
I wonder if we ought to be thinking about seeding planets in the goldilocks zone with microbes. People have already suggested seeding the atmosphere of Venus with microbes that would convert the atmosphere into something more acceptable to humans. Think about the progress we have made in the last century: in a million years or so we should be able to launch thousands of "micro" rockets; the payload would only need to be a milligram or so; they would need to sling shot off planets in the solar system and then planets of near by stars; after that they would need to calculate there own sling shots and they would need to seek out there own targets. It would be unethical to target planets more than 100 million years old (some debate needed) unless the probes could determine that there was no life present.
Again, think about the progress we have made in the last century: in a million years we will be able to edit the "junk code" in DNA easily, so we will be able to leave a message for any intelligent life form which becomes able to read it. Is anyone searching for coded messages in the junk DNA of of the most ancient microbes?
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I know nothing about DNA sequencing/analysis.
Would it be possible to compare and line up the junk DNA from several different sources in order to remove the mutation changes and get back the original junk code.
If there was a coded message in there, then it's reasonable to assume that the intelligence which created it wanted it to be read. I would start by looking for binary representations of pi and e (maybe √2, √3 etc.). Any other suggestions?
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