Information panspermia is the concept of life forms travelling across the universe by means of transmission of compressed information representing said life forms e.g. via genome coding, which can then enable the recovery of intelligent life.

Name

The concept was invented and coined by

Vahe Gurzadyan Vahagn "Vahe" Gurzadyan ( hy, Վահագն Գուրզադյան; born 21 November 1955) is an Armenian mathematical physicist and a professor and head of Cosmology Center at Yerevan Physics Institute, Yerevan , Armenia, best known for co-writin ...

, and then listed by Stephen Webb as Solution 23 to the

Fermi paradox The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high a priori likelihood of its existence, and by extension of obtaining such evidence. As a 2015 article put it, ...

: "The

Armenia Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''Ox ...

n mathematical physicist Vahe Gurzadyan has posited an interesting hypothesis: we might inhabit a Galaxy 'full of traveling life streams' strings of bits beamed throughout space."

Background

Kolmogorov complexity In algorithmic information theory (a subfield of computer science and mathematics), the Kolmogorov complexity of an object, such as a piece of text, is the length of a shortest computer program (in a predetermined programming language) that produ ...

is defined as the length of the computer program which enables the complete recovery of an object. Gurzadyan showed that the complexity of the human

genome In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding ge ...

is relatively low due to non-random parts in the genomic sequences. Moreover, he noticed that since the genomic information on the terrestrial life, starting from bacteria up to humans, contains essential common parts, the entire terrestrial life information can be compressed and transmitted, as he estimated, to over Galactic distances via

Arecibo Arecibo (; ) is a city and municipality on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, located north of Utuado and Ciales; east of Hatillo; and west of Barceloneta and Florida. It is about west of San Juan, the ...

-type antenna.

Von Neumann Von Neumann may refer to: * John von Neumann (1903–1957), a Hungarian American mathematician * Von Neumann family * Von Neumann (surname), a German surname * Von Neumann (crater), a lunar impact crater See also

* Von Neumann algebra * Von Ne ...

automata networks or some other mechanism can perform the decoding of the information package. Within this concept, one can even assume that terrestrial life itself might be a result of such an information package. Information panspermia has been discussed by Gurzadyan and

Roger Penrose Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fello ...

within the scheme of

Conformal Cyclic Cosmology Conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC) is a cosmological model in the framework of general relativity and proposed by theoretical physicist Roger Penrose. In CCC, the universe iterates through infinite cycles, with the future timelike infinity (i.e. the ...

, i.e. the possibility of transmission of information from pre-Big Bang aeon to ours via the

cosmic microwave background radiation In Big Bang cosmology the cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR) is electromagnetic radiation that is a remnant from an early stage of the universe, also known as "relic radiation". The CMB is faint cosmic background radiation filling all spac ...

Influence on strategy of analysis of intelligent signals

This concept assumes a different strategy of the study of the cosmic signals based on universal compressing and decoding principles. Information panspermia is discussed in: "Gurzadyan’s idea offers a straightforward practical consequence: we should study alleged SETI signals from the point of view of the algorithmic information theory and we should try to identify and decode possible bit strings hidden in the noise."

References

{{reflist Search for extraterrestrial intelligence Interstellar messages Fermi paradox