Applying a maxim from computer science to biology raises the intriguing possibility that life existed before Earth did and may have originated outside our solar system, scientists say. Moore's Law is the observation that computers increase exponentially in complexity, at a rate of about double the transistors per integrated circuit every very two years. If you apply Moore's Law to just the last few years' rate of computational complexity and work backward, you'll get back to the 1960s, when the first microchip was, indeed, invented. Now, two geneticists have applied Moore's Law to the rate at which life on Earth grows in complexity — and the results suggest organic life first came into existence long before Earth itself.
Applying a maxim from computer science to biology raises the intriguing possibility that life existed before Earth did and may have originated outside our solar system, scientists say.
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Moore's Law is the observation that computers increase exponentially in complexity, at a rate of about double the transistors per integrated circuit every very two years. If you apply Moore's Law to just the last few years' rate of computational complexity and work backward, you'll get back to the 1960s, when the first microchip was, indeed, invented.
Now, two geneticists have applied Moore's Law to the rate at which life on Earth grows in complexity — and the results suggest organic life first came into existence long before Earth itself.
Staff Scientist Alexei Sharov of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, and Theoretical Biologist Richard Gordon of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida, took Moore's Law, replaced the transistors with nucleotides — the building blocks of DNA and RNA — and the circuits with genetic material, and did the math.
The results suggest life first appeared about 10 billion years ago, far older than the Earth's projected age of 4.5 billion years.
So even if it's mathematically possible for life to have existed before Earth did, is it physically possible? Again, Sharov and Gordon said yes, it is. As our solar system was forming, pre-existing bacterialike organisms, or even simple nucleotides from an older part of the galaxy, could have reached Earth by hitching an interstellar ride on comets, asteroids or other inorganic space debris — a theoretical process called panspermia.
Nebula and planet image via Shutterstock.
Read more at Discovery News.
