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Just make sure that while you're mucking with the DNA that you build in a display mechanism. Future races will get curious as to why trees display pictures on
by crusso 11y ago
Just make sure that while you're mucking with the DNA that you build in a display mechanism. Future races will get curious as to why trees display pictures on their trunks.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoAlready happened. Consider peafowls as an extreme examples, but there are many other animals displaying so elaborate patterns that the most reasonable explanation seems to be that someone in the past long gone was playing around with embedding vector displays in DNA.
- krapp 11y ago>the most reasonable explanation seems to be that someone in the past long gone was playing around with embedding vector displays in DNA I think you're confusing reason with Star Trek. Elaborate, repeating patterns can emerge from any number of random or chaotic processes, that doesn't mean an intelligence tried to encode something in it. And even if it were plausible, given the amount of DNA we've studied by now, the lack of any obvious discoveries of messages from aliens or our ancient ancestors would suggest that it's not that effective as a storage medium for arbitrary messages.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI know. That was meant as a joke. I still sometimes forget that on HN, humour tags are obligatory. ;).
- krapp 11y agoHacker News has apparently destroyed my ability to tell...
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI sometimes have a problem too. BTW. You mentioned Star Trek, actually that (IMO) pretty ridiculous episode with holographic messages hidden in DNA was on my mind when I wrote the original comment...
- krapp 11y agoStar Trek is full of unfortunate, badly executed attempts at what should have been good ideas. Discovering that all the humanoid species in the galaxy are genetically related would be worthy of an entire season, and might actually make the setting a bit more plausible. But it was just sort of ham-handedly dealt with using silly treknobabble and then quickly forgotten about, because heaven forbid anyone take some science seriously on a science fiction tv show. There was also a species that had a galaxy-wide empire and used portals instead of starships to get around that only got mentioned once or twice, despite apparently being able to move stars around. And the Dyson sphere could (should) have been it's own series.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI agree. But note that TNG is also one of the best if not the best sci-fi series ever made, science-wise, and it's responsible for bringing up a generation of scientists and engineers. This reflects rather sadly on the general state of science-fiction in TV, though. The demise of Iconians always felt far-fetched to me. They had a portal network spanning a galaxy that could even be used to stage invasions at unexpecting opponents, and yet the whole empire collapsed down after a single supernova? A TNG spin-off about the Dyson sphere would be uber-cool. I'd love that.