Xref: utzoo sci.bio:1307 sci.astro:2360 sci.philosophy.tech:655 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!dietz From: dietz@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Paul F. Dietz) Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.astro,sci.philosophy.tech Subject: Re: DNA for interstellar messages Message-ID: <18967@cornell.UUCP> Date: 7 Jul 88 18:18:52 GMT References: <2244@ur-tut.UUCP> <940@cfa183.cfa250.harvard.edu> Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP Reply-To: dietz@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Paul F. Dietz) Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY Lines: 26 From article <2244@ur-tut.UUCP>, by powi@ur-tut (Peter Owings): > I was fortunate enough to have several conversations with Sir Fred > Hoyle when he visited the University of Rochester. If there is > anyone who has written about stuff like "Bacteria From Space", Sir > Fred has. You might try looking at a book called > _Grains_to_Bacteria_. The only problem with this book is that it > is very technical, going into spectral observations of interstellar > particles. You might want to read Shapiro's (I believe that's the name) description of H&W's work in the book "Origins". The description of H&W's methodology is fascinating. They apparently took some organic spectra and ran them through a blurring procedure, then remarked at how the resulting spectra resembled that of interstellar grains. Shapiro gave an analogy to illustrate the validity of this procedure. Suppose you have a picture of a man taken on a foggy night. You claim this is actually a picture of President Reagan. To support your claim, you take a picture of Reagan and blur it, then note the similarities (for example, in both pictures the figures have two arms and two legs). Nature wised up after a while and stopped accepting their papers. Paul F. Dietz dietz@gvax.cs.cornell.edu