9 Batsh*t Crazy Theories That Might Actually Be True
1. Biological SETI: Aliens Have Coded Messages Into Our DNA.
Hold onto your tinfoil hats, because this one is mad.
It turns out that whatever it is that drives humans to leave "Danno woz here" graffiti on bus stops, could be a universal trait. In a paper published in the journal Icarus back in 2013, a pair of scientists think that they might have spotted a message from extraterrestrials within our genetic code.
This is part of the panspermia theory which puts forwards the idea that life on Earth originated elsewhere in the universe and was brought to our planet billions of years ago.
The authors of the paper put forward their argument thusly:
The code is a flexible mapping between codons and amino acids, and this flexibility allows modifying the code artificially. But once fixed, the code might stay unchanged over cosmological timescales; in fact, it is the most durable construct known. Therefore it represents an exceptionally reliable storage for an intelligent signature.
Admittedly, it's a pretty inefficient way to send a message, but perhaps it's some kind of alien way of tagging their creations as they send them off into the universe, like a cosmological serial number.
Love the feeling of science stuff in your brain box? Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for plenty more where that came from.