Could the microbes that surround us actually be encoded with interstellar messages from some far-flung race of space aliens? It’s a question that has been posed for decades by some members of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) community. But most recently it was tackled by longtime space advocate Robert Zubrin, at this month’s ‘Breakthrough Discuss 2019’ conference at the University of California at Berkeley.
Given that we are now capable of sequencing the entire human genome, it’s not so far-fetched to think that we might be well-served to look for patterns, even messages in strands of bacterial DNA. Such microbes might make the perfect conduit for an interstellar Encyclopedia Galactica.
The idea is that once they are launched intentionally or even unintentionally, bacteria can travel interstellar distances and potentially seed the universe with messages from whoever encrypted them.
They might be seeding the universe with far more than messages. To read more, click here.