(Phys.org) —Geneticists Richard Gordon of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida and Alexei Sharov of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore have proposed, in a paper uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, that if the evolution of life follows Moore's Law, then it predates the existence of planet Earth.
Moore's Law, of course, famously suggests that the complexity of computers grows at a rate of double the transistors per circuit every two years, resulting in exponential growth. Looking at the complexity of computers today and working Moore's Law backwards shows that the first microchips came about during the 1960s, which is when they were actually invented. In their paper, Gordon and Sharov take the same approach, only they apply it to biological complexity.
The two researchers acknowledge their ideas are more of a "thought exercise" than a theory proposal, but at the same time suggest their calculations ought to be taken seriously. They start with the idea of genetic complexity doubling every 376 million years—working backwards, they say, means that life first came about almost 10 billion years ago, which of course predates the creation of Earth itself. Most scientists agree the Earth formed just 4.5 billion years ago. Assuming that Moore's Law does apply to biological complexity, this would suggest that life began somewhere other than on Earth and migrated here.
Of course there are other possibilities to explain what happened, as the two acknowledge—life could have evolved following Moore's Law during certain periods but not at others—a deep freeze could have temporarily halted changes in complexity, for example, or cataclysmic events could have periodically killed off the more advanced biotic life forms. There is also the possibility that the development of life had to reach a certain stage of development before it began to conform to Moore's Law. Then of course, there is the very real possibility that the beginnings and evolution of life don't conform to Moore's Law at all.
Gordon and Sharov's paper is likely to set off multiple rounds of discussion regarding not just the origin of life on Earth, but in the galaxy as well. If life truly predates our planet, and it can be proved, what impact might that have on religious thought and what might it mean to those looking for meaning in its very existence?
More information:Life Before Earth, arXiv:1304.3381 [physics.gen-ph] arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381
Abstract
An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before the Earth was formed. Life may have started from systems with single heritable elements that are functionally equivalent to a nucleotide. The genetic complexity, roughly measured by the number of non-redundant functional nucleotides, is expected to have grown exponentially due to several positive feedback factors: gene cooperation, duplication of genes with their subsequent specialization, and emergence of novel functional niches associated with existing genes. Linear regression of genetic complexity on a log scale extrapolated back to just one base pair suggests the time of the origin of life 9.7 billion years ago. This cosmic time scale for the evolution of life has important consequences: life took ca. 5 billion years to reach the complexity of bacteria; the environments in which life originated and evolved to the prokaryote stage may have been quite different from those envisaged on Earth; there was no intelligent life in our universe prior to the origin of Earth, thus Earth could not have been deliberately seeded with life by intelligent aliens; Earth was seeded by panspermia; experimental replication of the origin of life from scratch may have to emulate many cumulative rare events; and the Drake equation for guesstimating the number of civilizations in the universe is likely wrong, as intelligent life has just begun appearing in our universe. Evolution of advanced organisms has accelerated via development of additional information-processing systems: epigenetic memory, primitive mind, multicellular brain, language, books, computers, and Internet. As a result the doubling time of complexity has reached ca. 20 years. Finally, we discuss the issue of the predicted technological singularity and give a biosemiotics perspective on the increase of complexity.
via Arxiv blog
Journal information:arXiv
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FAQs
Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empirical relationship linked to gains from experience in production.
Did life exist before Earth? ›
As life on our planet has evolved, its complexity has increased exponentially. Two scientists using Moore's Law – a theory that explains technological development – have extrapolated this trend backwards and found that by this measure, life is older than Earth itself.
How to calculate Moore's law? ›
What is the equation for Moore's Law?
- Moore did not make an equation for his prediction, but it's easy to create one. ...
- Future Processing Power = Current Processing Power ⋅ 2n.
- In which n = the number of years to develop a new microprocessor divided by 2.
- Let's do a quick example. ...
- Future Processing Power = 3,500 ⋅ 25.
Moore's Law states that the number of components on a single chip doubles every two years at minimal cost. While not actual science, it was an observation and extrapolation that has held steady since 1965.
What is Moore's law Short answer? ›
Moore's Law is the observation that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years with minimal rise in cost. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted a doubling of transistors every year for the next 10 years in his original paper published in 1965.
What describes Moore's law? ›
Definition. Moore's law is a term used to refer to the observation made by the late Gordon Moore in 1965 that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years.
When did life actually begin? ›
With an environment devoid of oxygen and high in methane, for much of its history Earth would not have been a welcoming place for animals. The earliest life forms we know of were microscopic organisms (microbes) that left signals of their presence in rocks about 3.7 billion years old.
Can scientists create life from nothing? ›
Attempts at another genesis may capture several aspects of lifelike behavior, but none can be unquestionably alive or a novel instance of life built from scratch.
How old do Christians think the Earth is? ›
Concerning the age of the Earth, the Bible's genealogical records combined with the Genesis 1 account of creation are used to estimate an age for the Earth and universe of about 6000 years, with a bit of uncertainty on the completeness of the genealogical records, allowing for a few thousand years more.
What limits Moore's law? ›
Limitations to Moore's Law. For transistor counts to keep growing, the size of a transistor must keep getting smaller. But chip density and processor speed have run up against an important limit: denser chips and faster signal processing both generate increased heat.
The observation that the number of transistors on computer chips doubles approximately every two years is known as Moore's Law. Moore's Law is not a law of nature, but an observation of a long-term trend in how technology is changing. The law was first described by Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel, in 1965.
Does Moore's law apply to AI? ›
In essence, Moore's Law gives us a glimpse into the future of technological accessibility and affordability, encouraging us to step confidently into the world of AI, armed with the knowledge that the best is yet to come.
What stops Moore's Law? ›
As chips get smaller and more powerful, they get hotter and present power-management challenges. And at some, point Moore's Law will stop because we will no longer be able to shrink the spaces between components on a chip.
Has Moore's Law been broken? ›
Although miniaturization is still happening, the Moore's Law standard of doubling the components on a semiconductor chip every two years has been broken.
Will computers stop getting faster? ›
they seem to already be getting close to the limits. Transistors will stop getting smaller , clock speed and architectures optimization also have their limits.
What is Moore's law in a nutshell? ›
It is attributed to Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel. In a nutshell, the law states that - with more miniaturization possible, in every 2 years, the number of transistors in ICs (Integrated Circuit) doubles. This leads to more and more processing power, even for personal computers, smart phones etc.
Why is Moore's law an important idea? ›
The importance of Moore's Law isn't just that computers get bigger and faster over time; it's that engineers can predict how much bigger and faster, which helps them plan the software and hardware development projects to start today, for use five years from now.
What is Moore's law kids definition? ›
Moore's law. Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors on a computer chip was doubling about every 18–24 months. As shown in the logarithmic graph of the number of transistors on Intel's processors at the time of their introduction, his “law” was being obeyed.
What are the consequences of Moore's law? ›
Economic Implications of Moore's Law
One of the economic impacts of the law is that computing devices continue to show exponential growth in complexity and computing power while effecting a comparable reduction in cost to the manufacturer and the consumer.
