Alien DNA?

It's too bad Pope Leo didn't take on space aliens in Magnifica Humanitas -- it's a question of technological misunderstanding not all that far from transhumanism, which he does discuss. But in any case, some crazy stuff has been coming out of the CIA lately, not least of which is the story of David Rush, the management-level spook who was busted with $40 million worth of gold bars in his home, which I'll likely get to tomorrow. But today, there's this:

The Central Intelligence Agency attempted to use genealogy database sites in its search for aliens, a whistleblower claims.

Dr. Jason Reza Jorjani told the “American Alchemy” podcast that Army veteran Lyn Buchanan informed him of an initiative in which the agency was exploring sites like 23andMe and Ancestry.

Buchanan claimed he was a spy with the CIA’s Remote Viewing Program.

“The CIA wants to hunt them down,” Jorjani stated, citing the program’s purpose of probing whether people could use extrasensory perception to conduct recon on distant objects, events or people.

The doctor acknowledged that Buchanan revealed to him that former CIA analyst Christopher “Kit” Green concocted a secret method to access both sites to screen users for a specific “genetic variance” linked to extraterrestrial beings.

Now, let's consider the prevailing paradigm of alien life, which is implicit in Fermi's paradox: there are X to the 27th Earth-like planets, and it follows that life could have evolved on a bodacious number of them, at least assuming that all you need to get life is some amino acids bubbling in puddles in such a way that they begin to reproduce or something. Fermi asked, of course, why we aren't seeing space aliens all the time if that's how it works, but we'll leave that aside for now.

The first problem I see with this CIA project to identify alien DNA is how they decided that life on other planets evolved to reproduce via DNA. The whole Darwinian evolutionary model says that life forms evolve via random mutation; something changes, and it either makes things better, and the fitter variant survives, or it makes things worse, and the less-fit variant dies off. How many gajillion tries did Mother Nature have to make, over how many bazillion years, to come up with DNA?

This method of genetic transmission, assuming it evolved in this random way, must be completely unique to what evolved on planet Earth. Let's say there's a planet Zohran on which some form of genetic transmission evolved, completely separate from Earth -- heck, go ahead and postulate X to the 27th Earth-like planets, and some form of genetic transmssion evolved separately on a bodacious number of them. What are the chances any two would involve anything remotely like DNA, much less be compatible enough that traits could be successfully transferred between organisms of the respective planets?

After all, creatures from Zohran might have 17 tentacle-like appendages and organs whose function we can't remotely imagine. Even if they have something close enough to DNA to be compatible with human DNA, how could you sort out the codes for the 17 tentacles and completely foreign organs to get anything like a viable fetus of either species? Even with DNA, only a very limited number of Earth species will successfully crossbreed.

Just for fun, I asked Chrome AI mode, "Would DNA be necessary for life to evolve on other planets?" It answered,

No, DNA itself is not strictly necessary for life to evolve on other planets, but an information-carrying molecule with similar properties is essential. Life requires a way to store, replicate, and pass down genetic instructions so natural selection can drive evolution. While Earth life settled on DNA, alternative molecular systems could fulfill this exact same role elsewhere in the universe.

The chemical architecture of alien life will largely depend on the solvent available on that planet. DNA and RNA work perfectly in water. However, if a planet features liquid methane seas (like Saturn's moon Titan) or liquid sulfuric acid, entirely different molecular structures—potentially utilizing silicon bonds instead of carbon—would be required to remain stable and functional,

But even this assumes some type of reproduction evolved on other planets that mirrors the two-parent genetic system that evolved on Earth. What if organisms on another planet just start to exist and modify themselves as needed without reproducing? If you can postulate that somehow life just started on Earth and almost immediately began reproducing to transmit genetic information, you can just as well postulate that organisms on Zohran just start to exist but don't need to reproduce, because they evolve internally and just keep living.

But because they don't die and don't reproduce, they don't transmit genetic information at all -- that's a primitive Earthling trait. So there's no way to crossbreed Earthlings with Zohranites. The assumption that you might is pure Earthling cultural bias. But there's more on space aliens in the latest news:

A small group of scientists have long suggested that the seeds of life may have been distributed across the vast distances of space via cosmic dust, asteroids, or comets — a theory known as panspermia.

. . . It’s an intriguing albeit far-fetched hypothesis that most recently caught the interest of Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb. Following months of observations of mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, which came surprisingly close to a number of solar system planets during its brief visit last year, Loeb proposed that it could’ve been shedding the building blocks of life during its journey — or even have been designed to seed planets like our own intentionally.

Well, that would explain why all the X to the 27th Earth-like planets had DNA, it was part of the original building blocks of life that were distributed to all of them on asteroids, but that just begs the question of how the building blocks of life that were distributed all over the universe got there in the first place. This makes my head hurt. It reminds me of our friend Judie, who likes the National Geographic TV show Ice Road Rescue, which she characterizes as tow truck drivers dedicated to saving people from their own stupidity.

But the question I still have is why the CIA was paying people to track down alien DNA, which is just a special case of the bigger question, how the CIA had a management-level guy who was able to requisition $40 million in gold bars that he stashed in his house. I'll maybe take this up tomorrow.