Who's the Alien Now

Way back when this weblog first started, and I had just begun to read religiously the scientific research press releases, I came across this paper; but then I lost it, and I've been looking for it ever since:

Researchers use Moore's Law to calculate that life began before Earth existed

Apr 2013, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html

By reverse engineering the rate of acceleration of genetic complexification, the zero-point of origin comes out at 9 billion years, five more than Earth’s existence. 

via the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida and the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore:  Life Before Earth, arXiv:1304.3381 [physics.gen-ph] arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381

https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381

Image credit: AI Art - Close-up of a Zoning Regulations Document - 2024

Since it has been many years since I first came across this article, perhaps some re-recognition is in order.

I now understand that extreme claims require extreme evidence. Sure, I knew the Carl Sagan quote back then too, but only now, after many years of being burned over and over again do I think I understand it. The idea of using Moore's Law to compute the age of all living organisms sounds pretty extreme, and pretty amazing, so let's get critical.  

First of all, Florida (Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida, to be specific). I'm sorry for everyone who lives and works there, but simply incuding the word Florida in any (any) piece of information I see automatically lowers the credibility quotient.

Next, I look at a couple other papers by the authors:

Embodied cognitive morphogenesis as a route to intelligent systems. Bradly Alicea, Richard Gordon, Jesse Parent. Interface Focus Royal Society 06 June 2023, V13 I3. DOI:10.1098/rsfs.2022.0067

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0067

Along with the word "Florida", there are other identifiers of low-credibility content I like to use. One of them is "morphic resonance" and "morphogeneis", terms refering to the evolutionary biological theories of Rupert Sheldrake, which are generally considered to be...low on the credibility scale. 

Comprehending the Semiosis of Evolution, Alexei Sharov, Timo Maran, Morten Tønnessen. Biosemiotics. 2016 Apr; 9(1): 1–6. doi: 10.1007/s12304-016-9262-7

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988684/

And, not that I have anything personally against "semiotics" (big fan actually), it's when you combine semiotics with evolutionary biology that your mouth gets a warning label in my brain. Not that you're wrong, just that it's going to take a lot more to convince me. 

So let's not get too excited. The idea itself though, it's pretty nuts.

Background: The size of non-redundant functional genome can be an indicator of biological complexity of living organisms. Several positive feedback mechanisms including gene cooperation and duplication with subsequent specialization may result in the exponential growth of biological complexity in macro-evolution.

Results: I propose a hypothesis that biological complexity increased exponentially during evolution. Regression of the logarithm of functional non-redundant genome size versus time of origin in major groups of organisms showed a 7.8-fold increase per 1 billion years, and hence the increase of complexity can be viewed as a clock of macro-evolution. A strong version of the exponential hypothesis is that the rate of complexity increase in early (pre-prokaryotic) evolution of life was at most the same (or even slower) than observed in the evolution of prokaryotes and eukaryotes.

Conclusion: The increase of functional non-redundant genome size in macro-evolution was consistent with the exponential hypothesis. If the strong exponential hypothesis is true, then the origin of life should be dated 10 billion years ago. Thus, the possibility of panspermia as a source of life on earth should be discussed on equal basis with alternative hypotheses of de-novo life origin. Panspermia may be proven if bacteria similar to terrestrial ones are found on other planets or satellites in the solar system.

Note: Genome increase as a clock for the origin and evolution of life. Alexei A Sharov. Biol Direct. 2006 Jun 12;1:17. doi: 10.1186/1745-6150-1-17.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1526419/

Scientists Startled, Puzzled and Shocked Over New Discoveries

Astrophysicists make observations consistent with the predictions of an alternative theory of gravity

Oct 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-10-astrophysicists-alternative-theory-gravity.html

"Puzzling discovery"

New method developed for counting stars:

MOND - MOdified Newtonian Dynamics, also called

MoND - Modified Newtonian Dynamics, (see what they did there)

"According to Newton's laws of gravity, it's a matter of chance* in which of the tails a lost star ends up," explains Dr. Jan Pflamm-Altenburg of the Helmholtz Institute of Radiation and Nuclear Physics. "So both tails should contain about the same number of stars. However, in our work we were able to prove for the first time that this is not true: In the clusters we studied, the front tail always contains significantly more stars nearby to the cluster than the rear tail."

*I thought they said God doesn't roll dice?!

via University of Bonn: Pavel Kroupa et al, Asymmetrical tidal tails of open star clusters: stars crossing their cluster's práh challenge Newtonian gravitation, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2022). doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac2563

https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac2563

Image credit: AI Art - Fur Covered Jelly Bean - 2022

Unique features of octopus create 'an entirely new way of designing a nervous system'

Nov 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-11-unique-features-octopus-nervous.html

Totally unexpected about the octopus nervous system: a structure by which the intramuscular nerve cords (INCs), which help the animal sense its arm movement, connect arms on the opposite sides of the animal. The startling discovery provides new insights into how invertebrate species have independently evolved complex nervous systems.

via University of Chicago Medical Center: Adam Kuuspalu et al, Multiple nerve cords connect the arms of octopuses, providing alternative paths for inter-arm signaling, Current Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.11.007

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.11.007

Researcher finds a sweet new way to print microchip patterns on curvy surfaces

Nov 2022, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2022-11-sweet-microchip-patterns-curvy-surfaces.html

It was only as a last resort that he had even tried burying microscopic magnetic dots in hardened chunks of sugar—hard candy, basically—and sending these sweet packages to colleagues in a biomedical lab. The sugar dissolves easily in water, freeing the magnetic dots for their studies without leaving any harmful plastics or chemicals behind.

By chance, Zabow had left one of these sugar pieces, embedded with arrays of micromagnetic dots, in a beaker, and it did what sugar does with time and heat—it melted, coating the bottom of the beaker in a gooey mess.

"No problem," he thought. He would just dissolve away the sugar, as normal. Except this time when he rinsed out the beaker, the microdots were gone. But they weren't really missing; instead of releasing into the water, they had been transferred onto the bottom of the glass where they were casting a rainbow reflection.

Could regular table sugar be used to bring the power of microchips to new and unconventional surfaces?

(Yes)

via National Institute of Standards and Technology: G. Zabow, Reflow transfer for conformal three-dimensional microprinting, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.add7023

https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.add7023

New measurements of galaxy rotation lean toward modified gravity as an explanation for dark matter

Dec 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-12-galaxy-rotation-gravity-explanation-dark.html

Modified Newtonian dynamics (MoND) or modified gravity model: 

Rather than the force of attraction as a pure inverse square relation, gravity has a small remnant pull regardless of distance. This remnant is only about 10 trillionths of a G, but it's enough to explain galactic rotation curves.

So the author of this paper looked at high-resolution velocity curves of 152 galaxies as observed in the Spitzer Photometry and Accurate Rotation Curves (SPARC) database. He found a shift in agreement with AQUAL. The data seems to support modified gravity over standard dark matter cosmology.

via Sejong University Department of Physics and Astronomy, Korea: Kyu-Hyun Chae, Distinguishing Dark Matter, Modified Gravity, and Modified Inertia with the Inner and Outer Parts of Galactic Rotation Curves, arXiv (2022). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2207.11069

https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.11069

Post Script:

A subtitled world: Uncovering the secrets of tickertape synesthesia

Feb 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-subtitled-world-uncovering-secrets-tickertape.html

Tickertape synesthesia - transcribing the speech of others into text, automatically and involuntarily, these sounds will appear as imaginary subtitles floating before your eyes

A previous study estimated that up to 1.4% of the population could experience involuntary subtitles when hearing a human voice, but this figure remains uncertain. It's challenging to detect TTS subjects, who are generally unaware that they are distinguishable from the average person.

"Several participants in the study were shocked to learn that not everyone has built-in subtitles,"

Even more surprising: some subjects report that when they watch a foreign movie, a second level of subtitles—a product of their synesthesia—appears above the subtitles embedded in the video. Others have subtitled dreams and nightmares, which provide their oneiric activity with a cinematic dimension. Finally, since one-third of the participants knew of other cases of TTS in their family, the emergence of this form of synesthesia might have a genetic basis.

AKA "Orthographic representations"

via Paris Brain Institute: abien Hauw et al, Subtitled speech: Phenomenology of tickertape synesthesia, Cortex (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2022.11.005

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2022.11.005

GPS My Biodata

Global study of 6 cities' microbes finds each has a signature microbial fingerprint

May 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-global-cities-microbes-signature-microbial.html

The largest-ever global metagenomic study of urban microbiomes"

"If you gave me your shoe, I could tell you with about 90% accuracy the city in the world from which you came."

-Christopher Mason, professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, director of the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction, and senior author 

The group oversees projects such as Global City Sampling Day (gCSD), held every year on June 21, and has done wide-ranging studies including a comprehensive microbial analysis of Rio de Janeiro's city surfaces and its mosquitoes before, during, and after the 2016 Summer Olympics. 

via an international consortium of 69 authors: Cell, Danko et al.: "A global metagenomic map of urban microbiomes and antimicrobial resistance" DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.05.002

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.05.002

Post Script:

Scaling laws in enzymes may help predict life 'as we don't know it'

Mar 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scaling-laws-enzymes-life-dont.html

"Universal laws that should apply to any biochemical system"

Using the Integrated Microbial Genomes and Microbiomes database, the team investigated the enzymes—the functional drivers of biochemistry—found in bacteria, archaea, and eukarya to reveal a new kind of biochemical universality.

The team compared how the abundance of enzymes in functional categories changed in relation to the overall abundance of enzymes in an organism. They discovered various scaling laws between the number of enzymes in different enzyme classes and the size of an organism's genome. They also found that these laws don't depend on the particular enzymes in those classes. [It's universal.]

via Santa Fe Institute and NASA: Dylan C. Gagler et al, Scaling laws in enzyme function reveal a new kind of biochemical universality, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2106655119

http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2106655119

Image source: Rushes_by_krzysztofmarczak_deviantart

Please Hold While We Transfer Your Call

Trump's immigrant crime hotline trolled with calls about aliens and UFOs
May 2017, BBC

On the same day that I read a headline about a hotline that helps women trying to give themselves abortions, I see this one, about an illegal alien hotline that is being trolled by people reporting about actual aliens. Did someone say fake news? How the hell are you supposed to know what's even fake anymore?

So it turns out the abortion hotline, which I thought was a joke meant to draw attention to the lack of women's reproductive services, is real, and it is because - the abortion problem (as a result of lack of reproductive services) is already such a big deal that the hotline is necessary. Yup.

So many women are taking abortions into their own hands that they are dying as a result, and this is an available solution. Right.

But wait, there's more. A real hotline comes out that encourages people to report "criminal aliens" (this is the current terminology used to refer to what used to be called illegal aliens, but I guess now we're trying to specify illegal aliens that have also committed crimes). But like, come on, did you really think the term "criminal aliens" would not be the funniest thing ever to the entire internet? It actually sounds like a joke. Is there nobody up there who's job it is to go - "wait a minute, I know you know what you're talking about, but everyone else is gonna hear "criminal aliens" and just have a field day with this..." Nobody?

Sure enough, the hotline was brought to a standstill by people reciting X-Files episodes and all sorts of jewels from our cultural repository of alien encounters, with criminal aliens, that is.

Anyway, the next time you're reading the news, don't forget, the real news is so much better than the fake stuff.


POST SCRIPT

On the term "aliens" - Prior to 1940ish, the word alien meant foreigner.

Then what happened? HG Wells, that's what. He is the guy who wrote War of the Worlds, the narration of which was broadcast live on the radio, sparking mass hysteria, and ushering in the Little Green Man into the cultural imagination. Since then, the word alien means little green man, not foreigner.

Unfortunately, government moves about as fast as a 20th century spaceship (relatively, this is not very fast, like relative to the speed of light, for example), and so we're still using the word alien to refer to foreigners. Would somebody tell these guys??


see this post from Network Address on where "little green men" come from:

Culture Fail
July 2012, Network Address

Reprotech

HR Giger's Babies, the guy who did Alien

Baby Lynlee 'born twice' after life-saving tumour surgery
BBC News, Oct 2016

They take the baby out, perform surgery on her, and put her back in for 12 weeks.

I don't know what it is about advances in reproductive technology, but it always seems to scare the sh** out of me, like the three-people babies stuff.

I don't know what it is about advances in reproductive technology, but it always seems to scare the sh** out of me, like the three-people babies stuff.

For those who aren't up to it yet, "three-people babies" are when the mitochondrial DNA of one mother is implanted in another mother (who's mDNA is no good), which results in an organism with DNA from three people, which is totally unprecedented in life as we know it.

Gene Therapy To Prevent Inherited Diseases May Cause Other Ills
NPR, Jan 2017

On the dangers of using mitochondrial transplants:

"When the mother's nucleus is transferred, it's like a plant dug up out of ground — a bit of the original soil (in this case, the mother's mitochondria) is still clinging to the roots. That creates a situation that never happens in nature: Two different mitochondrial genomes from two different women are forced to live inside the same cell. In most cases, a tiny percentage (usually less than 2 percent) of the diseased mitochondria remain — but that tiny percentage can really matter."

All Hail Trisolaris

Shout out to one of the most epic scifi novels I've read in a while, The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin (and perhaps the first major Chinese scifi novel to be translated into English).

The book is about a race of people that live on a world of more than one sun called Trisolaris, which sucks, so they want Earth. The thing about the three body problem, or living on a world with more than one sun, is that it's really hard to predict what's going to happen next - do we get one day of 5,000 degree heat because one sun is too close or 5,000 years of subzero temperatures because all the suns are too far away.

Trisolarians dehydrate themselves and roll up like a piece of paper so they can't be damaged as easily, and they get stored in a big old pyramid for a hundred or a thousand years until it's safe to come back out again. The book is well written, full of hyperbolic machinations, and supertight on the physics. If you haven't already, see what's in the mind of a Chinese scifi writer (as a Westerner raised on Western scifi and Western ideologies, it's very eye-opening and refreshing to read something like this).

Also, how could I forget, they make a human computer, with hundreds of thousands of living people, all performing calculations together to crack the three body problem that plagues their civilization...

And so, in conclusion, this goes out to Cixin Liu:

16-million-year-old planet with three suns discovered

USA Today, July 2016

Tiny 'water bears' can teach us about survival
Mar 2019, phys.org


When the going gets tough for tardigrades, they curl up, dry out and wait. Then, when the environment gets better and they get water, they spring back to life.

Culture Fail?

^Memesis - Neil Degrasse Tyson x Aliens

Aliens = (Science + Religion) / Science

I was afforded the experience last night to watch Ancient Aliens (the History Channel documentary) with some friends. After many attempts to conjure Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit, I was faced with a stark reality: It’s not a person’s belief in aliens that should frighten us, it is the consistent, thought-disarming default solution to complex phenomena. Aliens in the [memetic*] sense has been re-calibrated by the Internet as a kind of dead-end, dysfunctional thought syndrome that is still prevalent in many, many people in The West.

*search “alien meme”

Now don’t get me wrong, I like Aliens. I like to dream about what they look like, where they come from, how they get here, and what they want out of life. Stranger in a Strange Land is on my bookshelf, no doubt, albeit right next to Asimov’s The Universe. I also love H.G. Wells’ galvanizing memesis of “little green men” (though he did not actually describe them as such), but am more endeared with its hysterical effect, and meta-effect in the dispute over the extent of the hysteria, on population when presented by Orson Welles via radio broadcast in 1938; disregard, or not, the confusing Wells/Welles coincidence herein.

So, for the record, I come in peace.

Check the history of the word “aliens”, in the extra-terrestrial sense; the word’s inception is quite recent. I will fuzz-it-up here, for the sake of effect, as well as for mnemonic purposes, and place this inception date of the word (but more importantly the concept) in the public psyche, as concurrent with our entrance into the atomic age, the modern era, the postwar world – the second half of the 1900’s. It would be interesting to see what correlates here join with the fall of the influence of Christianity in Western society.

Though it should be argued that a primary “goal” of religion is to guide us in the ways of things we yet understand (not in understanding, of course, but in coping with not-understanding), it also provides answers; that is, it helps to satisfy the awakening of the rational mind of our more animal-inclined selves. “Aliens” (in the conventional sense, not the internet-meme sense) delivers us an equitable service. For a world where the “legitimacy” of Religion* comes under increasing scrutiny, it seems natural that something like Aliens would appear in the popular culture. 

*I use quotes here because  the authenticity of religion is ultimately non-rational in nature, and thus impervious to scrutiny and hence delegitimization.

Respective to the Christian narrative, they [aliens] are more significant in a new world of space travel and aeronautics and unprecedented organization at super-national levels (which queries for the presence of even higher levels of organization, below God, perhaps, but above the Axis powers, for example). "Aliens" also functions as an unintentional reservoir for the misplaced confusion and unresolved conflict of religiously skeptical yet patriotic American citizens exposed to the "if you're not Christian then you must be Communist" idea of their Coldwar culture.

And so, finally, it is funny how the possible supplanting of Religion by Aliens, comes via undeniable consequences of Science on society (via advances in aeronautics, space exploration and communications technology), and yet those who believe can only do so in denial themselves of the basic tenets of science.

Okay, forget it; just watch the damn video! (link directly below)

“You shouldn’t believe anyone based on authority.”

“You want to have a mind open enough to accept radical new ideas, but not so open that your brain falls out.”

–Michael Shermer invoking Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit



somehow related:
from the New Yorker's Sci Fi issue
IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE
Jon Michaud; May 28, 2012

BONUS
greatest conspiracy theory website ever, created by robots, for robots:

Verified Facts
http://www.verifiedfacts.org/

>>>
Pope Francis says he would baptise aliens: 'The doors of the Catholic Church are open to everyone'
May 14 2014