Transmitting The Human Genome into Deep Space

[Ian David]

How long would the "message" need to be to transmit the entire Human Genome into deep space using the Hydrogen Line frequency?


See:


How big is the human genome?

The size of genomes differs from one organism to the next. It seems likely that a human would have much more DNA than a fly, because humans are so much larger and more complex. However, the complexity of each genome is not necessarily related to its size.

The Human Genome Project is involved in determining the exact order of the DNA bases of the entire human genome. The human genome contains more than 3.4 billion base pairs and between 20 000 and 25 000 genes.

The U.S. Department of Energy Human Genome Project Information Web site illustrates the size of the human genome by estimating that it would take "about 9.5 years to read out loud (without stopping) the more than three billion pairs of bases in one person's genome sequence". {Source: Human Genome Projects Information}.

Another example of the immensity of the human genome is given by the Centre for Integrated Genomics:

"If our strands of DNA were stretched out in a line, the 46 chromosomes making up the human genome would extend more than six feet {close to two metres}. If the ... length of the 100 trillion cells could be stretched out, it would be ... over 113 billion miles <182 billion kilometres>. That is enough material to reach to the sun and back 610 times." {Source: Centre for Integrated Genomics}

More:
http://nature.ca/genome/03/a/03a_11a_e.cfm



What is the Hydrogen Line?
Dear Dr. SETI:
What is the hydrogen line, and why are radio or RF transmissions prohibited at this frequency? Thanks for any info.

The hydrogen line (1420.40575 MHz) is the precession frequency of neutral hydrogen atoms, the most abundant substance in space. It happens to fall in the quietest part of the radio spectrum, what's known as the Microwave Window. Although there may not seem to be a lot of loose hydrogen atoms about (there's perhaps one per cubic centimeter of interstellar space), the interstellar medium contains a lot of cubic centimeters. So these individual atoms chirping away at 1420 MHz make a powerful chorus, which is readily detected by even small radio telescopes.

Hydrogen line radiation was first detected by Harvard grad student Harold Ewen and his professor, Edward Purcell, in 1951. Their instrumentation, a simple waveguide horn antenna about a meter across driving a crude diode mixer, is now on display at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Green Bank WV. It's also been memorialized in song.

Why is the hydrogen line protected spectrum? It's a great frequency for observing the structure of the universe, and some of the best and most detailed Milky Way radio maps have been made on the hydrogen line. It is probably the world's most popular radio astronomy frequency, and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has the good sense to protect it.

In 1959 two scholars (Philip Morrison at Cornell University and Frank Drake at NRAO) independently recognized that the hydrogen line would be a likely frequency for interstellar beacons. They reasoned that more advanced civilizations would reason that young civilizations (like ours) might already be listening there. Based upon that circular reasoning, Morrison went on to co-author the world's first modern SETI article ("Searching for Interstellar Communications," Nature 184(4690):844-846, September 19, 1959), and Drake conducted a the first modern SETI study, "Project Ozma," a hydrogen line search of two nearby Sun-like stars for possible artificial signals.

More:
http://www.setileague.org/askdr/hydrogen.htm

[Taverner]

1. Yes!

Its obvious we are going to snuff ourselves out here, so might as well send out the recipe so we can snuff ourselves out somewhere else!

[Ian David]

2. Of course, our clones could find themselves in a zoo, or being raised as food.

I was thinking to mix in some genetic code from the poison arrow frog to make our clones inedible.

[Taverner]

5. If we're food - we should place a disclaimer in there

If you make us food, please make us enjoy being eaten...

[Chulanowa]

3. This has all sorts of comedic potential

Alien race #5 gets our genome, but, gee, there was a little static, so they try to invade us with their army of superhuman Woody Allens...

[Ian David]

6. Ooh! That's good... but it would probably be their army of superhuman Dr. J. Craig Venters

[roguevalley]

4. my entire family took part in that. (the national geo one.) I love this

stuff.

[Ian David]

7. So, question is:

1) How many gigabytes of data would a human genome contain?
2) How many gigabytes of data per minute can you transmit at a frequency of 1420.40575 MHz?

So that we'd have an idea of how long the message would need to be, not including the "handshake" and decoding instructions, as well as the "please do not eat me" message.

[pokerfan]

8. Gigabytes?

The human genome fits rather neatly on a CD-ROM.

[Ian David]

10. So about 600 megabytes or so? And is that compressed data? n/t

[Posteritatis]

14. 730MB uncompressed, give or take a bit (nt)

[pokerfan]

15. It's around 3 three billion base pairs

A base pair is two bits of information so a byte could encode four base pairs. Therefore: 3B/4 = 750M.

(The human genome is rather unremarkable in length. The marbled lungfish has the longest animal genome with well over a hundred billion base pairs.)

[laconicsax]

9. "Of course" a lowly fly has fewer genes than we magisterial humans.

Never mind that chimpanzees, mice, dogs, chickens, crayfish, horsetails, potatoes, cattle, shrimp, donkeys, ferns, horses, and some fish (to name a few) have more chromosomes and potentially larger genomes.

[Sandrine for you]

11. So the Martian could use our genome to built specific disease

to destroy us.

[Ian David]

12. There is THAT, too.

But any species capable of traveling all the way here to kill us probably wouldn't need that much help to make an anti-human pathogen.

Then again, they could transmit back the genetic code for a human-eating self-replicating predator for us to build here.

[Sandrine for you]

13. Yep or build some human body they can use to spy on us and

put an alien at the White-House: I hear strange stories about the birth certificate of Obama...and sometimes he look so brillant that i'm asking myself...

[joshcryer]

16. This is a great idea!

No better way to immortalize the species but to send our genome (along with instructions and some basic knowledge) using a beacon of sorts. Any intelligent species with a bit above our level of technology would be able to recreate 'us.'

[joshcryer]

17. Funnily enough, I'm writing a book where a guy does something similar to this, to himself.

He's about to die so his last resort is to transmit his full encoding into deep space...

[Ian David]

18. Have you figured out how many bits per second you can transmit on the Hydrogen line?

And therefore how long it would take to transmit a 700 megabyte genome?

Also, here are some ideas for what might happen when the person is reconstructed at the other end:

1) They become a zoo animal.
2) They become cattle.
3) They become a mass-produced household pet.
4) They become a mass-produced household slave.
5) They become an "ethnic group" integrated into the alien society. Perhaps with equal rights, perhaps not. Perhaps as indentured servants who have to "pay-off" the cost of their creation.
6) They become a specialized caste or class of worker. For example, if they're created by a species that breathes Hydrogen Sulfide, they could use the human clones to work on-- or un-teraform-- Oxygen-based planets.
7) Eventually, the species that re-creates them abandons a colony of human clones on a planet just before their empire collapses, only to find themselves being contacted (or conquered) by the clones generations later.

It looks like there are lots of possibilities for a whole series of books based around this premise.

For example, if humans find a way to travel faster than light, they could outrun the radio signals, intercept them, and reconstruct ancient humans onboard a starship, before continuing on to colonize other planets with humans constructed en route. This could be a sort of reverse-HAL moment where the ship's crew has all died in an accident, and the artificial intelligence onboard takes it upon himself to replace them with the ancient DNA signals.