Watching the show last night on Dark Matter. I came up with this question. I don't really know why it connected with this show but it did.

Sometime last year, I saw an artist concept of the known galaxy. Included in this drawing was some kind of filament that connects all of the galaxies together. I don't know if anyone else who saw that picture saw what I did. The drawing looked just like a strand of DNA. I would put a reference but I don't remember where I saw it.


Here is the question. If you lived on a molecule of DNA, would you notice when the cell divided?


I don't think you would. Mainly because I would think that your life span would be much shorter than the length of time it would take to for the cell to divide.

yes, because the DNA must "un-zip" in order to copy the DNA

true but if it takes the DNA 100 generations to un-zip.

or even only 5 generations to un-zip.

I think it would depend on scale. If one of the amino acids that make up the DNA chain as a whole were your planet, and the 'gene' you were part of were your solar system, then yes, you'd notice the DNA unzipping, even over generations, as it would mean the galaxy around you was tearing in half, and reforming. However, if your planet were an electron, circling the nuclear core (sun), then the galaxy could be considered the amino acid, and the unzipping process could be overlooked as the random movement of other galaxies.

I think you're on to something here Corthos..... It could be argued that the universe and the galaxy that we are in IS unzipping anyway..... If you believe the expanding universe theory or Entropy. So if you believe that, then you would have to say that the DNA is unzipping and that we are watching it unzip even now. The problem is one of scale.... we expect a DNA strand to be small, but if the Universe was some kind of DNA strand, then we could be observing the birth of a life form !!!

Where are you going with this thought Daniel ?

AJ

Where I am going with this is if the galaxies are amino acids then the universe would be a single cell in a much bigger creature. The thing that gets me is every time the scientists declare we have found the smallest form of matter, with in 20 years give or take we find something smaller. Yet we have decided that the largest thing is the universe. So what I am saying if things keep getting smaller why can't they also keep getting larger.


I got this idea from a novel, don't remember the name. The story line was talking about dimensions ie 1d, 2d, 3d, and a possible 4d. But when I saw that drawing and learned that we have found that there are 13 dimensions in this universe and the 13th was a membrane. The only things that I know of that has membrane is a living cell.

I've always found a certain appealing symmetry to imagining individual star systems like our own as maybe like the inner composition of atoms -- the neutron (sun) center, with orbiting etc. Mind you, I'm no scientist. I've always just liked to think of the possibility (as above, so below, and vice versa).

I've never thought of the possibility of the galaxies together being perhaps akin to DNA strands -- but then I've never seen the photo you describe, though I can imagine it, and your notions leave a lot to tickle the imagination. (Some years ago I heard a description of the orbits the galaxies have and that there is an argument all of them rotate in a spiral-like way around a center of the universe (and that we're way on the outskirts, but in the midst of our orbit working its way back in and up the spiral). That concept interested me -- but frankly I have no idea whether it comes from actual science or is one of the many somewhat oddball notions out there you can come across as someone not steeped in science and not immediately recognize as crank baloney.)

i'm not even going to try to argue about the flaws in your logic, i'm just going to post this link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-branes

My logic may be flawed. But then again I think slightly different than most people.

Serious question here . If you lived on a strand of DNA, how would you develop the physical consciousness /self aware ness to be aware of anything, including its division.

Presently, the only self aware consciousness we know of requires a scale much bigger than this to evolve and exist. I'm not sure, but a dna cell would probably be smaller than a single brain cell, so how would you get an awareness there to witness anything.

This problem fiirst arose for me in my pre teen years, in the late 50's early60's when I read of a person (in a SF novel) who became so small that they slipped between the molecules of existence around them.

It occurred to me then, that in practice you could not shrink your own brain cells etc and expect them to function; in that size is an intimate associate of function (despite what some people say about the matter).

If you were small enough to live on an electron, everything about you would be scaled to that size. Your brain cells, the air that you breath, everything would be scaled down for you. You see that is one of the concepts that the novel covered.

There is no way you can convince a 1d being that it wasn't the only thing around. You would have a hard time convincing a 2d being that there was such a thing as 3d and a 3d being would have the same problem with a 4d being. So it seems that the idea of a scaled down or up version of a human is hard for most people to get their brain around it too.

I am not saying that the are humans living on an electron or that we are living on a strand of DNA. I am just speculating a what if idea.

That was my point, in the real world, how do you scale down the size of a brain cell to tthink with, or the size of an air molecule to breathe, so that it can become smaller than the dna cell, while the dna cell retains its original size.

It is an interesting theoretical/philosophical point, but not possible given what we know of physics and biology at present/ It would be simpler to just ask, if we could get a microscope to that level of resolution, what would we observe, but you are asking about the observer perspective or observer effect, where this is not actually possible in this scenario and so unanswerable.

Its like asking, "if we could grow big enough that we were several orders of magnitude bigger than our galaxy, what would the creation of a new galaxy or nebula look like to us?". We can omly use our imagination to answer this. although we can see the formation of new galaxies and nebulae from our present perspective.

The idea becomes kind of circular, once you hit a certain point, ie, we're standing on an electron in an atom that makes up an amino acid chain that is our galaxy inside our local group of galaxy that actually is one gene seaquence in our globular cluster that would be one strand of DNA, our universe, would then be one cell, in an organism, that is, in itself, perhaps standing on another electron, in an even bigger atom, and so on. And of course, the other way around, works as well, as we may have untold numbers of civilizations living and dying in our sub-atomic structure every day.

I've thought about this before, and often wondered what would happen to us if the organism that our universe is a cell in should die? Would our universe die as well? Would it happen quickly, or would it slowly just run out of energy? Just some crazy thoughts

At some point the only way to get bigger would be to get smaller.

I am not sure but the cell(universe) would probable die before the organism did. From our point of view tho it would be close to forever for it take place. In other words the smaller you are the faster time goes. Not that you would notice.

Well, I like the idea but I think that its slightly wrong to directly compare the universe or parts of it to a DNA strand, it might resemble it though, just like almost every different scale of size in the universe seems to resemble other parts. Nucleus with electrons orbiting -> Cells with a nucleus -> (skip humans they don't really make sense) -> Sun with orbitting planets. I think this is due to how the forces in the universe works (strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnitivity and gravity.) Because they are all present everywhere we look at every level of size and were presumably unified at the beginning of the universe as one it only stands to reason that, since they govern matter, that matter would retain characteristics of each level of size. I guess the next question is what are the different levels of size and what's inbetween.

As I said in an earlier post. The idea of scale is plausible. But, it is hard for most people to get their heads around it.

Just like it took a hammer to the head(in this case the Catholic church) before we realized that we were not the center of the universe or are we.

I have no idea how the DNA have to do with the Universal Lines, but I think is the Master Mind behind that. Everything looks similar it doesn't mind is microscopically or macroscopically but everything looks like made by the same mind... Look at this picture and it seems like a machine and is the flagellum of E. Coli a bacteria... How about that?
http://www.lce.hut.fi/teaching/S-114.500/B...l_Flagellum.pdf

The link didn't work.


but since DNA is a computer program why not have living things look like machines.

I believe this solar system is an atom with 8 electrons. Scientist have discovered elementary particles revolving around the electron; the quarks. Most if not all of the planets have moons which I believe to be the quarks. I also believe this solar system was a very unstable atom at one time. We have asteroid belts; 3 of them, which means we may have had more planets, electrons. An electron always seeks an inner orbit. The planets, electrons, that were of the old system collided with the other planets, electrons, when they sought an inner orbit. The remains of those electrons that collided have become partial shells. That makes this system like 3 atoms in one. One of 4 electrons, one of 6, and one of 8 electrons. Look on a element chart and see what those are. 4 is Beryllium, 6 is Carbon, 8 is Oxygen.

The Earth is in the Beryllium atom, it has Carbon creatures, and Oxygen is a negative element within the atmosphere.
Jupiter and Saturn make up the Carbon atom. We do not know if there is Carbon creatures on those planets below the clouds. We know of the possibility of life beginning on the moons, the quarks, of these planets, electrons.
Uranus and Neptune make up the Oxygen atom. Don't know much about them. But, Puto is in the outer shell, so I don't include it.

Enough of my BS.