One of the other topics Richard Bonneau mentioned in his talk was the recent rapid advance in storing digital information within DNA. The latest methods of encoding digital information within DNA are vastly more space and energy efficient than silicon based storage, although they are still quite expensive. However, costs are expected to drop precipitously within the next ten years.
A single gram of DNA can store about 215 million gigabytes of digital data. The stored information can be retrieved with extremely high accuracy, and the DNA strands themselves can remain stable for tens of thousands of years.
Also, when such information is embedded into the gene sequence of living bacteria, the bacteria will reproduce it naturally in the course of binary fission. In this way, the digital data can be preserved essentially forever.
While I was listening to him talk about this, I began to wonder whether this has been done before. It is theoretically possible that a highly intelligent species evolved on our planet millions of years ago, and then became extinct for whatever reason.
Members of that species might have wished to pass the legacy of their knowledge down to future species, but only after that future species was sufficiently advanced to be able to handle such knowledge. What better way to do so then to encode their wisdom in DNA sequences?
For all we know, there might be bacteria around today that contain enormous wisdom, handed down to us from millions of years ago. If so, it may be centuries before we ourselves have advanced to the point where we can recognize and decode that information.
That is, of course, assuming we ourselves don’t become extinct first.
I just read somewhere that huge chunks of the human genome are actually DNA from ancient viruses. I’m just going to pretend now that that viral DNA is actually a message from an alien visitor for us to decrypt once our civilization was advanced enough. And further, that the message is the interstellar equivalent of “BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE,” because I have no reason to believe that aliens would be any less mischievous than us humans.
I was trying to stay away from the whole “Chariots of the Gods” thing. Aliens hacking our DNA was just a step too far for me.
Although I think we are in agreement here. “BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE” is not a bad message, as these things go. 😉
“A single gram of DNA can store about 215 million gigabytes”
Interesting. The capacity of a MicroSD card is up around 400GB. I don’t have a decent scale handy, but I’d be surprised if it weighs much more than a gram. Just the flash die is easily under 1 gram.