Information Panspermia
What is a human? The question at the heart of such speculations.
Could life be transmitted via radio waves, as the idea of “information panspermia” proposes?1 Couldn’t we send out interstellar probes, equipped with everything needed to print a human and, when the probe found a suitable location to print a human, send the information for printing the human out through the cosmos, to the probe?
First, the amount of information that would need to be sent is imprecise. Even if we are only talking about the human genome, getting a precise measurement of it is difficult. It is either around 700 megabytes, 200 gigabytes, or something like 125 megabytes.2
Second, a human isn’t a machine that can be printed off with only a genetic code. As the idea of holobionts shows, the human body is a complex array of organisms living symbiotically.3 What about the thousands of interactions we have with our microbiome every day? How will you print these bacteria and implant them into the growing printed human?
Beyond these considerations there are many others which could be speculated on. The point is that these fantastical ideas are, upon reflection, much more difficult than people may think, yet these ideas persist and are talked about often on social media platforms such as Reddit and YouTube.
Why? Because, in my opinion, humanity is viewing itself more and more like a biological machine that can be manipulated through technology. This is at the heart of such speculations and this attitude is something worth considering as we move forward in our ever changing world.
See Could Life Be Transmitted Via Radio Waves? Information Panspermia, 2023.
MBA, Reid J. Robison MD. “How Big Is the Human Genome?” Precision Medicine (blog), May 18, 2016. https://medium.com/precision-medicine/how-big-is-the-human-genome-e90caa3409b0.
The Economist. “The Idea of ‘Holobionts’ Represents a Paradigm Shift in Biology.” Accessed April 24, 2024. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/06/14/the-idea-of-holobionts-represents-a-paradigm-shift-in-biology?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=17210591673&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw26KxBhBDEiwAu6KXt3IdbXKxUWIpCaeFoHHBx98Vat42zz3z49NP-cuXHJjypQy5PVzX8xoC6OQQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds.