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Viruses might as well be alien nanobots created to spread and "engineer" life around the universe.
by sci_prog 7y ago
Viruses might as well be alien nanobots created to spread and "engineer" life around the universe.
- eitland 7y agoI am not a biologist, and that sounds weird to me: Aren't viruses dependent on hosts?
- NotAnEconomist 7y agoThe RNA-world hypothesis conjectures that life started via a chemical soup developing things similar to viroids. These early RNA-based replicators would go on to become more complicated, first developing a protective barrier and then specialized organelles. As a byproduct of that process, viruses developed which could interact with organelles (or just the soup inside a cell) to reproduce themselves without being part of the host "genetic code". In approximate complexity order: - self-replicating compound, in solution with precursors - viroid - virus - bacteria - archaea - eukaryota From that perspective, hiding viroids (or similar simple replicators) in comets and boosting them into other systems would be a relatively efficient way to "seed" life around the cosmos.
- Vinceo 7y agoWow, this blows my mind. So is there a hypothesis that viroids may have been planted on comets by aliens to seed life around the cosmos and that we may be a product of that? If so, do you know the name of that hypothesis? I guess there's not much to base such a wild hypothesis on but would love to go down the rabit hole anyways.
- pixl97 7y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia
- Vinceo 7y agoThanks
- 14 7y agoI can't find the article but I once read a fascinating theory that life is simply the evolution of entropy. The universe constantly trying to equalize, take higher energies and equalize them. Like a rock on a ledge there is energy waiting to release. Once all the energy is release the universe will end. The theory argued that life is simply the universe finding the most maximum way it can convert energy from one form to the other. I can't find the article at the moment but will continue looking. If correct it argues that life would be fundamental throughout the entire universe. Edit: Found it, it talks about thermodynamics and entropy being the inevitable outcome. https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-theory-of-life-20170726/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-t...
- 0xTJ 7y agoIt's a fun sci-fi idea, but it's completely detached from reality.
- headelf 7y agoCan you expand on why?
- thaumasiotes 7y agoSpecifically, it is the idea behind Speaker for the Dead and a theme of the following books.
- viscanti 7y agoGreat point. There's enough research there to show it's not just a fun sci-fi idea. It's not something that should be dismissed so easily.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoTechnically it is a hypothesis which does not yet have a good experimental design that might prove or falsify it. And in that aspect it isn't "canon" so it isn't "reality." But it is far from being a preposterous idea, and there are labs that are working on various ideas on how one might prove or disprove it.
- meowface 7y agoIt's also possible it's attached to other parts of reality. Maybe this is thing that happens with great frequency in other parts of the universe/multiverse, even if it may not be what happened here.
- sinuhe69 7y agoTo me, viruses are simply the survival horde of random mutation and recombination of amino acids. Let it be long enough and a world of organic compounds would create something like viruses.