http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20100227/860/ttc-scientists-spot-alien-invaders-in-mi.html
Sat, Feb 27 12:26 PM
Toronto, Feb 27 (IANS) Scientists have spotted 'alien' invaders in Milky Way, comprising as many as a quarter of the star clusters in our galaxy, many more than previously thought, says a new study.
The report also suggests that there may be as many as six dwarf galaxies yet to be discovered within the Milky Way, besides the two that were previously found.
'Some of the stars and star clusters you see when you look into space at night are aliens from another galaxy, just not the green-skinned type you find in a Hollywood movie,' says Terry Bridges, astronomer at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.
'These 'alien' star clusters (are ones) that have made their way into our galaxy over the last few billion years,' adds Bridges.
Previously, astronomers had suspected that some star clusters, each of which contains between 100,000 and a million stars, were foreign to our galaxy, but it was difficult to identify which ones.
Using mostly Hubble Space Telescope data, Bridges and Duncan Forbes, co-author, from Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, examined old star clusters within the Milky Way galaxy.
From the research they compiled the largest ever high-quality database to record the age and chemical properties of each of these clusters.
'We looked at all the data we could find. The best data are from the Hubble Telescope because it has the best imaging,' Bridges says. 'We looked at the ages and the amounts of heavy elements in these clusters, which can be measured from their stars.'
The researchers' work also suggests that the Milky Way may have swallowed up more dwarf galaxies than was previously thought, said a Queen's varsity release.
They found that many of the foreign clusters originally existed within dwarf galaxies -- 'mini' galaxies of up to 100 million stars that sit within our larger Milky Way.
The study is slated for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Monday, August 1, 2011
I've been to a spaceship where I met aliens: Russian politician
http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20100506/860/ttc-i-ve-been-to-a-spaceship-where-i-met.html
Thu, May 6 11:44 AM
London, May 6 (IANS) A Russian politician has made the startling claim that he was taken on a spaceship where he met aliens who wore yellow spacesuits.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the leader of the country's southern region of Kalymkia, has spoken about his having met aliens at a primetime television show.
He said he was taken on a spaceship sent to Earth and met extra-terrestrials wearing yellow spacesuits, The Sun reported Thursday.
Ilyumzhinov told Channel One April 26 that he had spent several hours in the company of aliens, who visited his apartment in Moscow Sep 18, 1997.
He said that he was about to fall asleep when someone called out to him from the balcony. He went out and said he saw the 'half-transparent half tube' spaceship. He went in and met human-like creatures, who gave him a tour of their spaceship.
'I am often asked which language I used to talk to them. Perhaps, it was on a level of the exchange of ideas,' he was quoted as saying.
He said aliens had come to Earth to take samples.
Russian MP Andre Lebedev has sought a probe into the claims and demanded formulation of guidelines on what politicians should do if they are kidnapped by aliens.
~KIROAN~
Thu, May 6 11:44 AM
London, May 6 (IANS) A Russian politician has made the startling claim that he was taken on a spaceship where he met aliens who wore yellow spacesuits.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the leader of the country's southern region of Kalymkia, has spoken about his having met aliens at a primetime television show.
He said he was taken on a spaceship sent to Earth and met extra-terrestrials wearing yellow spacesuits, The Sun reported Thursday.
Ilyumzhinov told Channel One April 26 that he had spent several hours in the company of aliens, who visited his apartment in Moscow Sep 18, 1997.
He said that he was about to fall asleep when someone called out to him from the balcony. He went out and said he saw the 'half-transparent half tube' spaceship. He went in and met human-like creatures, who gave him a tour of their spaceship.
'I am often asked which language I used to talk to them. Perhaps, it was on a level of the exchange of ideas,' he was quoted as saying.
He said aliens had come to Earth to take samples.
Russian MP Andre Lebedev has sought a probe into the claims and demanded formulation of guidelines on what politicians should do if they are kidnapped by aliens.
~KIROAN~
Have aliens taken over Voyager 2 spacecraft?
Have aliens taken over Voyager 2 spacecraft?
http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100513/981/tsc-have-aliens-taken-over-voyager-2-spa_1.html
Thu, May 13 12:20 PM
Melbourne, May 13 (ANI): After leaving Earth's surface 33 years ago, the Voyager 2 spacecraft may have been hijacked by aliens, it has been claimed.
Scientists had installed a 12-inch disk containing music and greetings in 55 languages in case intelligent extraterrestrial life ever found it, but the spacecraft is sending signals in an unknown format.
"It seems almost as if someone had reprogrammed or hijacked the probe - thus perhaps we do not yet know the whole truth," The Daily Telegraph quoted alien expert Hartwig Hausdorf as saying.
The spacecraft late last month began sending science data 8.6 billion miles to Earth in a changed format that mission managers could not decode.
Engineers are working to solve the data transmissions and have since instructed Voyager 2 to only transmit data on its own health and status while they work on the problem.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, explored the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and kept on going. Nearly 33 years later, they are the most distant human-made objects.
Voyager 1 is 10.5 billion miles from Earth and in about five years is expected to pass through the heliosphere, a bubble the sun creates around the solar system, and enter interstellar space. Voyager 2 will follow after that.
~KIROAN~
http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100513/981/tsc-have-aliens-taken-over-voyager-2-spa_1.html
Thu, May 13 12:20 PM
Melbourne, May 13 (ANI): After leaving Earth's surface 33 years ago, the Voyager 2 spacecraft may have been hijacked by aliens, it has been claimed.
Scientists had installed a 12-inch disk containing music and greetings in 55 languages in case intelligent extraterrestrial life ever found it, but the spacecraft is sending signals in an unknown format.
"It seems almost as if someone had reprogrammed or hijacked the probe - thus perhaps we do not yet know the whole truth," The Daily Telegraph quoted alien expert Hartwig Hausdorf as saying.
The spacecraft late last month began sending science data 8.6 billion miles to Earth in a changed format that mission managers could not decode.
Engineers are working to solve the data transmissions and have since instructed Voyager 2 to only transmit data on its own health and status while they work on the problem.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, explored the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and kept on going. Nearly 33 years later, they are the most distant human-made objects.
Voyager 1 is 10.5 billion miles from Earth and in about five years is expected to pass through the heliosphere, a bubble the sun creates around the solar system, and enter interstellar space. Voyager 2 will follow after that.
~KIROAN~
British X-Files describe secret UFO encounters
Britain released hundreds of previously secret "UFO files" on Thursday including a letter saying that Winston Churchill had ordered a 50 year cover-up of a wartime encounter between a UFO and military pilot.
The files, published by the National Archives, span decades and contain scores of witness accounts, sketches and classified briefing notes documenting mysterious sightings across Britain.
One Ministry of Defence note refers to a 1999 letter stating that a Royal Air Force plane returning from a mission in Europe during World War Two was "approached by a metallic UFO".
The unidentified author of the letter says his grandfather attended a wartime meeting between Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower during which the two expressed concern over the incident and "decided to keep it secret".
The MoD subsequently investigated the case but found no written record of the incident, the files say.
"... the MoD does not have any expertise or role in respect of 'UFO/flying saucer' matters or to the question of the existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial lifeforms, about which it remains totally open-minded," it said in a 1999 note.
Britain has been slowly releasing long-classified files related to sightings of mysterious craft in the skies above its cities, compiled and investigated by the MoD over past decades.
Some cases subsequently received rational explanations, such as meteors burning up in the atmosphere, but many are unsolved.
One memo, dated 1997, contains reports of "sonic booms" and a mysterious plane crash in northern England. No wreckage was found in an ensuing search by the police and rescue teams.
Another incident refers to sightings of a "black triangular UFO" over the home of the shadow home secretary in Kent in the late 1990s. An investigation showed no breach of security.
In a case filed in 1995, the captain of a plane approaching Manchester airport reported a near-miss with an "unidentified object", and a witness on the ground separately provided a sketch showing a UFO "20 times the size of a football field".
An inquiry failed to indentify the object, the memo said.
Buried deep among meticulous sketches and MoD memos, some files refer to curious episodes in Britain's history. During the Cold War, Britain sent fighter jets to intercept Soviet aircraft as often as 200 times a year, one MoD document showed.
The note, filed in 1996, said mystery sightings picked up on radar during the Cold War were invariably proved to be Soviet ant-submarine or long-range reconnaissance planes.
"Prior to the demise of the Former Soviet Union, aircraft were scrambled some 200 times annually to intercept and investigate uncorrelated tracks penetrating the UK Air defence region (AKADR) from the north..." it said.
The last such scramble was in September 1991 -- around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Link
http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/20100805/778/tod-british-x-files-describe-secret-ufo.htm
~KIROAN~
The files, published by the National Archives, span decades and contain scores of witness accounts, sketches and classified briefing notes documenting mysterious sightings across Britain.
One Ministry of Defence note refers to a 1999 letter stating that a Royal Air Force plane returning from a mission in Europe during World War Two was "approached by a metallic UFO".
The unidentified author of the letter says his grandfather attended a wartime meeting between Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower during which the two expressed concern over the incident and "decided to keep it secret".
The MoD subsequently investigated the case but found no written record of the incident, the files say.
"... the MoD does not have any expertise or role in respect of 'UFO/flying saucer' matters or to the question of the existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial lifeforms, about which it remains totally open-minded," it said in a 1999 note.
Britain has been slowly releasing long-classified files related to sightings of mysterious craft in the skies above its cities, compiled and investigated by the MoD over past decades.
Some cases subsequently received rational explanations, such as meteors burning up in the atmosphere, but many are unsolved.
One memo, dated 1997, contains reports of "sonic booms" and a mysterious plane crash in northern England. No wreckage was found in an ensuing search by the police and rescue teams.
Another incident refers to sightings of a "black triangular UFO" over the home of the shadow home secretary in Kent in the late 1990s. An investigation showed no breach of security.
In a case filed in 1995, the captain of a plane approaching Manchester airport reported a near-miss with an "unidentified object", and a witness on the ground separately provided a sketch showing a UFO "20 times the size of a football field".
An inquiry failed to indentify the object, the memo said.
Buried deep among meticulous sketches and MoD memos, some files refer to curious episodes in Britain's history. During the Cold War, Britain sent fighter jets to intercept Soviet aircraft as often as 200 times a year, one MoD document showed.
The note, filed in 1996, said mystery sightings picked up on radar during the Cold War were invariably proved to be Soviet ant-submarine or long-range reconnaissance planes.
"Prior to the demise of the Former Soviet Union, aircraft were scrambled some 200 times annually to intercept and investigate uncorrelated tracks penetrating the UK Air defence region (AKADR) from the north..." it said.
The last such scramble was in September 1991 -- around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Link
http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/20100805/778/tod-british-x-files-describe-secret-ufo.htm
~KIROAN~
WikiLeaks: new diplomatic cables contain UFO details, says Julian Assange
By Andrew Hough
Wednesday December 08 2010
New leaked diplomatic cables set to be published by Wikileaks will contain fresh details on UFOs, according to the website's founder Julian Assange.
The 39 year-old Australian, who is wanted by Interpol over a charge of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, said there were some references to extraterrestrial life in yet-to-be-published confidential files obtained from the American government.
He did not disclose what information was contained in the diplomatic memos obtained by the whistleblowing website. It also remains unclear when they will be published.
Mr Assange said his website, under considerable strain in recent days over its "Cablegate" series of leaks, received emails from “weirdos” claiming to have seen UFOs.
“Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant,” he wrote when asked if any of the documents he had received referred to extraterrestrial life.
“However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules.
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original."
“It is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.”
Some websites later speculated that the cables could offer answers to claims from US military pilots that aliens have landed, infiltrated British nuclear missile sites and deactivated the weapons.
Mr Assange’s comments were made during a webchat with The Guardian, during which he confirmed his team were taking security precautions due to "threats against our lives".
Mr Assange is under intense scrutiny worldwide after his website began releasing a selection of more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables passed to the whistle-blowing website.
Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, has called for him to be hunted down like the al-Qaeda leadership while other members of her party have directly called for a capital sentence against WikiLeaks personnel.
"The threats against our lives are a matter of public record. However, we are taking the appropriate precautions to the degree that we are able when dealing with a super power," Assange wrote in response to a reader's question.
A Canadian pundit called earlier this week for him to be assassinated for leaking US diplomatic cables, while former Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said those responsible for the leaks should face execution.
The Swedish authorities are also seeking Mr Assange over a charge of rape and sexual assault. Interpol has issued an international warrant for his arrest.
British police requested more information about the penalties Mr Assange could face if convicted, according to a statement on the Swedish Prosecution Authority's website.
It is understood that this has now been provided, although the Metropolitan Police refused to discuss whether officers from its extradition unit were preparing to arrest Mr Assange.
Mr Assange's UK lawyer said that neither the British nor the Swedish authorities had sought to speak to his client.
- Andrew Hough
~KIROAN~
Wednesday December 08 2010
New leaked diplomatic cables set to be published by Wikileaks will contain fresh details on UFOs, according to the website's founder Julian Assange.
The 39 year-old Australian, who is wanted by Interpol over a charge of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, said there were some references to extraterrestrial life in yet-to-be-published confidential files obtained from the American government.
He did not disclose what information was contained in the diplomatic memos obtained by the whistleblowing website. It also remains unclear when they will be published.
Mr Assange said his website, under considerable strain in recent days over its "Cablegate" series of leaks, received emails from “weirdos” claiming to have seen UFOs.
“Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant,” he wrote when asked if any of the documents he had received referred to extraterrestrial life.
“However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules.
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original."
“It is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.”
Some websites later speculated that the cables could offer answers to claims from US military pilots that aliens have landed, infiltrated British nuclear missile sites and deactivated the weapons.
Mr Assange’s comments were made during a webchat with The Guardian, during which he confirmed his team were taking security precautions due to "threats against our lives".
Mr Assange is under intense scrutiny worldwide after his website began releasing a selection of more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables passed to the whistle-blowing website.
Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, has called for him to be hunted down like the al-Qaeda leadership while other members of her party have directly called for a capital sentence against WikiLeaks personnel.
"The threats against our lives are a matter of public record. However, we are taking the appropriate precautions to the degree that we are able when dealing with a super power," Assange wrote in response to a reader's question.
A Canadian pundit called earlier this week for him to be assassinated for leaking US diplomatic cables, while former Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said those responsible for the leaks should face execution.
The Swedish authorities are also seeking Mr Assange over a charge of rape and sexual assault. Interpol has issued an international warrant for his arrest.
British police requested more information about the penalties Mr Assange could face if convicted, according to a statement on the Swedish Prosecution Authority's website.
It is understood that this has now been provided, although the Metropolitan Police refused to discuss whether officers from its extradition unit were preparing to arrest Mr Assange.
Mr Assange's UK lawyer said that neither the British nor the Swedish authorities had sought to speak to his client.
- Andrew Hough
~KIROAN~
Top Most Important UFO Incidents in History
Roswell, New Mexico Crash and Recovery, 1947
what took place in July of 1947 some fifty miles north of the New Mexico city of Roswell when an unassuming farmer named Matt Brazell discovered a debris field strewn with tiny metallic strips and wooden sticks near his farm. Having heard about “flying disks” in the papers (the Arnold sighting having made national headlines two months earlier), Matt wondered if he hadn’t stumbled across his very own crashed flying saucer and immediately contacted local military authorities. Curiously, at first they agreed with the farmer’s assessment and declared that a “crashed disk” had been recovered, only to recant hours later and claim the debris was part of a crashed weather balloon all along. That seemed to put an end the story and it was quickly relegated to the dustbin of UFO folklore until the late seventies when the Army Air Force intelligence officer who had been sent to pick the stuff up (which he stuffed into the trunk of his car)—one Jesse Marcel—claimed the material he recovered was extraterrestrial after all, creating a conspiracy theory of epic proportions that refuses to die to this day. So ingrained in the popular culture did the Roswell “crash” eventually become, that even when the Air Force came clean in 1995 by declassifying its up-to-then top secret Mogul project and admitting they had made the whole crash disk part up in an attempt to divert attention from Mogul’s true mission (high altitude balloons carrying long arrays of instruments designed to detect evidence of Soviet atomic blasts in the upper atmosphere), most ufologists refused to accept it. Since then, the story has diverged from its original account of a single debris field into stories of multiple crashes, loads of dead aliens, and charges that the technology recovered from it and a half dozen other crashes since (apparently UFOs crash with some regularity) is behind most of the great
~KIROAN~
what took place in July of 1947 some fifty miles north of the New Mexico city of Roswell when an unassuming farmer named Matt Brazell discovered a debris field strewn with tiny metallic strips and wooden sticks near his farm. Having heard about “flying disks” in the papers (the Arnold sighting having made national headlines two months earlier), Matt wondered if he hadn’t stumbled across his very own crashed flying saucer and immediately contacted local military authorities. Curiously, at first they agreed with the farmer’s assessment and declared that a “crashed disk” had been recovered, only to recant hours later and claim the debris was part of a crashed weather balloon all along. That seemed to put an end the story and it was quickly relegated to the dustbin of UFO folklore until the late seventies when the Army Air Force intelligence officer who had been sent to pick the stuff up (which he stuffed into the trunk of his car)—one Jesse Marcel—claimed the material he recovered was extraterrestrial after all, creating a conspiracy theory of epic proportions that refuses to die to this day. So ingrained in the popular culture did the Roswell “crash” eventually become, that even when the Air Force came clean in 1995 by declassifying its up-to-then top secret Mogul project and admitting they had made the whole crash disk part up in an attempt to divert attention from Mogul’s true mission (high altitude balloons carrying long arrays of instruments designed to detect evidence of Soviet atomic blasts in the upper atmosphere), most ufologists refused to accept it. Since then, the story has diverged from its original account of a single debris field into stories of multiple crashes, loads of dead aliens, and charges that the technology recovered from it and a half dozen other crashes since (apparently UFOs crash with some regularity) is behind most of the great
~KIROAN~
Scientists from Human Genome Project - Junk DNA possible ET origin?
A group of researchers working at the Human Genome Project will be announcing soon that they made an astonishing scientific discovery: They believe so-called non-coding sequences (97%) in human DNA is no less than genetic code of an unknown extraterrestrial life form.
The non-coding sequences are common to all living organisms on Earth, from molds to fish to humans. In human DNA, they constitute larger part of the total genome, says Prof. Sam Chang, the group leader. Non-coding sequences, also known as "junk DNA", were discovered years ago, and their function remains mystery.
Unlike normal genes, which carry the information that intracellular machinery uses to synthesize proteins, enzymes and other chemicals produced by our bodies, non-coding sequences are never used for any purpose. They are never expressed, meaning that the information they carry is never read, no substance is synthesized and they have no function at all. We exist on only 3% of our DNA.
The junk genes merely enjoy the ride with hard working active genes, passed from generation to generation. What are they? How come these idle genes are in our genome? Those were the question many scientists posed and failed to answer - until the breakthrough discovery by Prof. Sam Chang and his group.
Trying to understand the origins and meaning of junk DNA Prof. Chang realized that he first needs a definition of "junk". Is junk DNA really junk, (useless and meaningless) or it contains some information not claimed by the rest of DNA for whatever reason? He once mentioned the question to an acquaintance, Dr. Lipshutz, a young theoretical physicist turned Wall Street derivative securities specialist. "Easy," replied Lipshutz. "We’ll run your sequence through the software I use to analyze market data, and it will show if your sequences are total garbage, "white noise", or there is a message in there." This new breed of analysts with strong background in math, physics and statistics are getting more and more popular with Wall Street firms. They sift through gigabytes of market statistics, trying to uncover useful correlation between the various market indexes, and individual stocks.
Working evenings and weekends, Lipshutz managed to show that non-coding sequences are not all junk, they carry information. Combining massive database of the Human Genome Project with thousands of data files developed by geneticists all over the world Lipshutz calculated Kolmogorov entropy of the non-coding sequences and compared it with the entropy of regular, active genes. Kolmogorov entropy, introduced by the famous Russian mathematician half a century ago, was successfully used to quantify the level of randomness in various sequences, from time sequences of noise in radio lamps to sequences of letters in 19th century Russian poetry. By and large, the technique allows researchers to quantitatively compare various sequences and conclude which one carries more information than the other does. "To my surprise, the entropy of coding and non-coding DNA sequences was not that different", continues Lipshutz. "There was noise in both but it was no junk at all. If the market data were that orderly, I would have already retired."
After a year of cooperation with Lipshutz, Chang was convinced, there is a hidden information in junk DNA. However, how could one understand its meaning if the information is never used? With active sequences you try to watch the cell and see what proteins are being made using the information. This wouldn’t work with dormant genes. There will be experiment to test a hypothesis; one should rely on the power of his thought. Since there are letters, it should be tested in some old languages, perhaps Sumerian, Egyptian, Hebrew, and so on. Prof. Sam Chang solicited help from three specialists in the field, but none of them managed to find a solution. There were no cultural clues, no references to other known languages, the field was too alien for the linguists.
"I asked myself: who else can decipher a hidden message?" Chang continues. "Of course, cryptographers! In addition, I began talking with researchers at the National Security Agency. It took me few months to make them return my calls. Were they running background checks on me? Alternatively, were they too busy lobbying senators on retaining and strengthening their authority to control exports of encryption technologies? Eventually, a junior fellow was assigned to answer my questions. He listened, requested my questions in writing and after another, few months turned me down. His message was polite but meant, "Go to hell with your crazy ideas. We are a serious agency, its National Security, dude. We are too busy."
Well, Sam, forget the Government, talk to the private sector. Therefore, I began approaching computer security consultants. They were genuinely interested, and a couple of them even began working on my project, but their enthusiasm always faded after a month. I kept calling them until one nice fellow told me: "I’d love to work on your project if I had more time. I am overbooked. Emissaries of major banks and Fortune 500 companies are begging me to plumb the holes in their networks. They pay me $500 an hour. I can give you an educational discount, can you afford $350?" Scrambling $15/hr for a post doctoral studies is a big deal in academia, $350 sounded as something extraorbital." Eventually Prof. Chang was referred to Dr. Adnan Mussaelian, a talented cryptographer in the former Soviet republic of Armenia. Poor fellow barely survived on a $15 a month salary and occasional fees for tutoring children of Armenian nuveau riches. A $10,000 research grant was a struck of luck, he began working like a beaver.
Adnan promptly confirmed the findings of his Wall Street predecessor: The entropy indicated tons of information almost in the clear, it was not too strong cryptographic system, it didn’t appear to be a tough problem. Adnan began applying differential cryptoanalysis and similar standard cryptographic techniques.
He was two months in the project when he noticed that all non-coding sequences are usually preceded by one short DNA sequence. A very similar sequence usually followed the junk. These segments, known to biologists as alu sequences, were all over the whole human genome. Being non-coding, junk sequences themselves, alu are one of the most common genes of all.
Trained as a cryptographer and computer programmer, and having no knowledge of microbiology, Adnan approached the genetic code as of computer code. Dealing with 0, 1, 2, 3 (four bases of genetic code) instead of 0s and 1s of the binary code was a sort of nuisance, but the computer code was what he was analyzing and deciphering all his life. He was on familiar territory. The most common symbol in the code that causes no action followed by a chunk of dormant code. What is that? Just playing with the analogy Adnan grabbed the source code of one his programs and fed it into the program that calculates the statistics of symbols and short sequences, a tool often used in decoding messages. What was the most common symbol? Of course, it was "/", a symbol of comment! He took a Pascal code, and it were { and } ! Of course, the code between two slashes in C is never executed, and is never meant to be executed; it is not the code, it is the comment to the code!
Being unable to resist the temptation to further play with the analogy, Adnan began comparing statistical distributions of the comments in computer and genetic code. There must be a striking difference. This should show up in statistics. Nevertheless, statistically, junk DNA was not much different from active, coding sequences. To be sure, Adnan fed a program into the analyzer: surprisingly, the statistics of code and comments were almost the same. He looked into the source code and realized why: there were very few comments in between the slashes, it was mostly C code the author decided to exclude from execution, a common practice among programmers.
Adnan, religiously inclined person, was thinking about the divine hand - but after analyzing the spaghetti code inside the sequences he convinced himself that whoever wrote the small code was not God. Who wrote the active, small coding part of human genetic code was not very well organized, he was a rather sloppy programmer. It looked like rather somebody from Microsoft, but at the time human genetic code was written, there was no Microsoft on Earth.
On Earth? It was like a lightning... Was the genetic code for all life on Earth written by an extraterrestrial programmer and then somehow deposited here, for execution? The idea was mad and frightening, and Adnan resisted it for days. Then he decided to proceed. If the non-coding sequences are parts of the program that were rejected or abandoned by the author, there is a way to make them work. The only thing one needs to do is to remove the symbols of comments and if the portion between the /*......*/ symbols is a meaningful routine it may compile and execute! Following this line of thought, Adnan selected only those non-coding sequences that had exactly the same frequency distribution of symbols as the active genes. This procedure excluded the comments in Marcian or Q, whatever it was. He selected some 200 non-coding sequences that most closely resembled real genes, stripped them of /*, //, and similar stuff and after few days of hesitation sent e-mail to his American boss, asking him to find a way to put them in E-coli or whatever host and make them work.
Chang did not replied for two weeks. "I thought I was fired", confessed Dr. Mussaelian. "With every day of his silence I more and more realized how crazy my idea was. Chang would conclude I was a schizophrenic and would terminate the contract. Chang finally responded and, to my surprise, he did not fire me. He had not bought my extraterrestrial theory but agreed to try to make my sequences work."
Biologists have attempted for years to make junk sequences express, without much success. Sometimes nothing turned out; sometimes it was junk again. It was not surprising. Grab an arbitrary portion of the excluded computer code and try to compile it. Most likely, it will fail. At best, it will produce bizarre results. Analyze the code carefully, fish out a whole function from the comments, and you may make it work. Because of careful Mussaelian’s statistical analysis 4 of the 200 sequences he selected, began working, producing tiny amounts of a chemical compounds.
"I was anxiously awaiting the response from Chang," says Dr. Mussaelian. "Would it be a more or less normal protein or something out of ordinary? The answer was shocking: it was a substance, known to be produced by several types of leukemia in men and animals. Surprisingly, three other sequences also produced cancer-related chemicals. It no longer looked like a coincidence. When one awakens a viable dormant gene, it produces cancer-related proteins. Researchers began searching Human Genome Project databases for the four genes they isolated from junk DNA. Eventually, three of the four were found there, listed as active, non-junk genes. This was not a big surprise: since cancer tissues produce the protein, there must be somewhere a gene, which codes it! The surprise came later: In the active, non-junk portion of the code the gene in question (the researchers called it "jhlg1", for junk human leukemia gene) was not preceded by the alu sequence, i.e. the /* symbol was missing. However, the closing */ symbol at the end of "jhlg1" was there. This explained why "jhlg1" was not expressed in the depth of the junk DNA but worked fine in the normal, active part of the genome. The one who wrote the basic genetic code for humans excluded portion of the big code by embracing them in /*... */ but missed some of the opening /* symbol. His compiler seems to be garbage, too: a good compiler, even from terrestrial Microsoft, would most likely refuse to compile such program at all.
Prof. Sam Chang with his students began searching for genes associated with various cancers, and almost in all instances they discovered that those genes are followed by the alu sequence (i.e. protein as a comment closing symbol */), but never preceded by the comment opening /* gene! "This explains why diseases result in cell damage and their death, whereas cancers lead to cell reproduction and growth. Because only few fragments from the big code are expressed, they never lead to coherent growth. What we get with cancer, is expression of only few of genes alien to humans and symbiosis with some genes of bacterial parasites that lead to illogical, bizarre and apparently meaningless chunks of living cells. The chunks have its own veins, arteries, and its own immune system that vigorously resists all our anti-cancer drugs.
"Our hypothesis is that a higher extraterrestrial life form was engaged in creating new life and planting it on various planets. Earth is just one of them. Perhaps, after programming, our creators grow us the same way we grow bacteria in Petri dishes. We can’t know their motives - whether it was a scientific experiment, or a way of preparing new planets for colonization, or is it long time ongoing business of seedling life in the universe. If we think about it in our human terms, the extraterrestrial programmers were most probably working on one big code consisting of several projects, and the projects should have produced various life forms for various planets. They have been also trying various solutions. They wrote the big code, executed it, did not like some function, changed them or added new one, executed again, made more improvements, tried again and again. Of course, soon or later it was behind schedule. Few deadlines have already passed. Then the management began pressing for an immediate release. The programmers were ordered to cut all their idealistic plans for the future and concentrate now on one (Earth) project to meet the pressing deadline. Very likely in a rush, the programmers cut down drastically the big code and delivered basic program intended for Earth. However, at that time they were (perhaps) not quite certain which functions of the big code may be needed later and which not, so they kept them all there. Instead of cleaning the basic program by deleting all the lines of the big code, they converted them into comments, and in the rush they missed few /* symbols in the comments here or there; thus presenting mankind with illogical growth of mass of cells we know as cancer."
There are three options to the problem. Either delete all the /* symbols and comments and clean this way the basic code, or add all the missing */ and avoid illogical mixing of the basic code with the big code. Alternatively, in the third option, remove all the / symbols and let work the basic code with the big code as a complete program. Unfortunately, none of these options are within our capacity. If we were able to efficiently insert genes into the chromosomes of living men, our breakthrough discovery would mean instant cure for all future cancer cases; at least from the programmer point of view. Theoretically, we can do it in a laboratory, but we have no practical means to implant the repaired DNA into living subjects. The mystery of "junk DNA" and cancer seems to be solved, but no quick cure shall be expected. The best thing we can do now is to try nourishing new, cancer-free line of humans with gradually debugged basic genetic code. That will take a long time. For us and our children, there is no hope on the horizon.
"However, from the programmer’s point of view, there is also positive outlook in it. What we see in our DNA is a program consisting of two versions, a big code and basic code. First fact is, the complete program was positively not written on Earth; that is now a verified fact. The second fact is, that genes by themselves are not enough to explain evolution; there must be something more in the game. What it is or where it is, we don’t kow. The third fact is, no creator of a new work, be it a composer, engineer or programmer, from Mars or Microsoft, will ever leave his work without the option for improvement or upgrade. Ingenious here is, that the upgrade is already enclosed - the "junk DNA" is nothing more than hidden and dormant upgrade of our basic code! We know for some time that certain cosmic rays have power to modify DNA. With this in mind, plausible solution is available. The extraterrestrial programmers may use just one flash of the right energy from somewhere in the Universe to instruct the basic code to remove all the /*…*/ symbols, fuse itself with the big code ("junk DNA") and jumpstart working of our whole DNA. That would change us forever, some of us within months, some of us within generations. The change would be not too much physical, (except no more cancers, diseases and short life), but it will catapult us intellectually. Suddenly, we will be in time comparable to coexistence of Neanderthals with Cromagnons. The old will be replaced giving birth to a new cycle. The complete program is elegant, very clever self-organizing, auto-executing, auto-developing and auto-correcting software for a highly advanced biological computer with build-in connection to the ageless energy and wisdom of the Universe. Software wise, within us is either short and diseased life, or potential for a super-intelligent super-being with a long and healthy life. This triggers puzzling questions - was the reduction to the basic code done by sloppy programmers in a rush (as it appears to us), or was the disabling of the big code purposeful act which can be cancelled by a "remote control" whenever desired?"
Soon or later, we have to come to grips with the unbelievable notion that every life on Earth carries genetic code for his extraterrestrial cousin and that evolution is not what we think it is. This discovery may well shake the very roots of humanity - our beliefs in our concept of God and in our own power over our destiny. With the right paradigm, we may discover one day that all forms of life and the whole Universe is just one huge intellectual exercise in thoughts expressed mathematically, by Design, by Creator
~KIROAN~
The non-coding sequences are common to all living organisms on Earth, from molds to fish to humans. In human DNA, they constitute larger part of the total genome, says Prof. Sam Chang, the group leader. Non-coding sequences, also known as "junk DNA", were discovered years ago, and their function remains mystery.
Unlike normal genes, which carry the information that intracellular machinery uses to synthesize proteins, enzymes and other chemicals produced by our bodies, non-coding sequences are never used for any purpose. They are never expressed, meaning that the information they carry is never read, no substance is synthesized and they have no function at all. We exist on only 3% of our DNA.
The junk genes merely enjoy the ride with hard working active genes, passed from generation to generation. What are they? How come these idle genes are in our genome? Those were the question many scientists posed and failed to answer - until the breakthrough discovery by Prof. Sam Chang and his group.
Trying to understand the origins and meaning of junk DNA Prof. Chang realized that he first needs a definition of "junk". Is junk DNA really junk, (useless and meaningless) or it contains some information not claimed by the rest of DNA for whatever reason? He once mentioned the question to an acquaintance, Dr. Lipshutz, a young theoretical physicist turned Wall Street derivative securities specialist. "Easy," replied Lipshutz. "We’ll run your sequence through the software I use to analyze market data, and it will show if your sequences are total garbage, "white noise", or there is a message in there." This new breed of analysts with strong background in math, physics and statistics are getting more and more popular with Wall Street firms. They sift through gigabytes of market statistics, trying to uncover useful correlation between the various market indexes, and individual stocks.
Working evenings and weekends, Lipshutz managed to show that non-coding sequences are not all junk, they carry information. Combining massive database of the Human Genome Project with thousands of data files developed by geneticists all over the world Lipshutz calculated Kolmogorov entropy of the non-coding sequences and compared it with the entropy of regular, active genes. Kolmogorov entropy, introduced by the famous Russian mathematician half a century ago, was successfully used to quantify the level of randomness in various sequences, from time sequences of noise in radio lamps to sequences of letters in 19th century Russian poetry. By and large, the technique allows researchers to quantitatively compare various sequences and conclude which one carries more information than the other does. "To my surprise, the entropy of coding and non-coding DNA sequences was not that different", continues Lipshutz. "There was noise in both but it was no junk at all. If the market data were that orderly, I would have already retired."
After a year of cooperation with Lipshutz, Chang was convinced, there is a hidden information in junk DNA. However, how could one understand its meaning if the information is never used? With active sequences you try to watch the cell and see what proteins are being made using the information. This wouldn’t work with dormant genes. There will be experiment to test a hypothesis; one should rely on the power of his thought. Since there are letters, it should be tested in some old languages, perhaps Sumerian, Egyptian, Hebrew, and so on. Prof. Sam Chang solicited help from three specialists in the field, but none of them managed to find a solution. There were no cultural clues, no references to other known languages, the field was too alien for the linguists.
"I asked myself: who else can decipher a hidden message?" Chang continues. "Of course, cryptographers! In addition, I began talking with researchers at the National Security Agency. It took me few months to make them return my calls. Were they running background checks on me? Alternatively, were they too busy lobbying senators on retaining and strengthening their authority to control exports of encryption technologies? Eventually, a junior fellow was assigned to answer my questions. He listened, requested my questions in writing and after another, few months turned me down. His message was polite but meant, "Go to hell with your crazy ideas. We are a serious agency, its National Security, dude. We are too busy."
Well, Sam, forget the Government, talk to the private sector. Therefore, I began approaching computer security consultants. They were genuinely interested, and a couple of them even began working on my project, but their enthusiasm always faded after a month. I kept calling them until one nice fellow told me: "I’d love to work on your project if I had more time. I am overbooked. Emissaries of major banks and Fortune 500 companies are begging me to plumb the holes in their networks. They pay me $500 an hour. I can give you an educational discount, can you afford $350?" Scrambling $15/hr for a post doctoral studies is a big deal in academia, $350 sounded as something extraorbital." Eventually Prof. Chang was referred to Dr. Adnan Mussaelian, a talented cryptographer in the former Soviet republic of Armenia. Poor fellow barely survived on a $15 a month salary and occasional fees for tutoring children of Armenian nuveau riches. A $10,000 research grant was a struck of luck, he began working like a beaver.
Adnan promptly confirmed the findings of his Wall Street predecessor: The entropy indicated tons of information almost in the clear, it was not too strong cryptographic system, it didn’t appear to be a tough problem. Adnan began applying differential cryptoanalysis and similar standard cryptographic techniques.
He was two months in the project when he noticed that all non-coding sequences are usually preceded by one short DNA sequence. A very similar sequence usually followed the junk. These segments, known to biologists as alu sequences, were all over the whole human genome. Being non-coding, junk sequences themselves, alu are one of the most common genes of all.
Trained as a cryptographer and computer programmer, and having no knowledge of microbiology, Adnan approached the genetic code as of computer code. Dealing with 0, 1, 2, 3 (four bases of genetic code) instead of 0s and 1s of the binary code was a sort of nuisance, but the computer code was what he was analyzing and deciphering all his life. He was on familiar territory. The most common symbol in the code that causes no action followed by a chunk of dormant code. What is that? Just playing with the analogy Adnan grabbed the source code of one his programs and fed it into the program that calculates the statistics of symbols and short sequences, a tool often used in decoding messages. What was the most common symbol? Of course, it was "/", a symbol of comment! He took a Pascal code, and it were { and } ! Of course, the code between two slashes in C is never executed, and is never meant to be executed; it is not the code, it is the comment to the code!
Being unable to resist the temptation to further play with the analogy, Adnan began comparing statistical distributions of the comments in computer and genetic code. There must be a striking difference. This should show up in statistics. Nevertheless, statistically, junk DNA was not much different from active, coding sequences. To be sure, Adnan fed a program into the analyzer: surprisingly, the statistics of code and comments were almost the same. He looked into the source code and realized why: there were very few comments in between the slashes, it was mostly C code the author decided to exclude from execution, a common practice among programmers.
Adnan, religiously inclined person, was thinking about the divine hand - but after analyzing the spaghetti code inside the sequences he convinced himself that whoever wrote the small code was not God. Who wrote the active, small coding part of human genetic code was not very well organized, he was a rather sloppy programmer. It looked like rather somebody from Microsoft, but at the time human genetic code was written, there was no Microsoft on Earth.
On Earth? It was like a lightning... Was the genetic code for all life on Earth written by an extraterrestrial programmer and then somehow deposited here, for execution? The idea was mad and frightening, and Adnan resisted it for days. Then he decided to proceed. If the non-coding sequences are parts of the program that were rejected or abandoned by the author, there is a way to make them work. The only thing one needs to do is to remove the symbols of comments and if the portion between the /*......*/ symbols is a meaningful routine it may compile and execute! Following this line of thought, Adnan selected only those non-coding sequences that had exactly the same frequency distribution of symbols as the active genes. This procedure excluded the comments in Marcian or Q, whatever it was. He selected some 200 non-coding sequences that most closely resembled real genes, stripped them of /*, //, and similar stuff and after few days of hesitation sent e-mail to his American boss, asking him to find a way to put them in E-coli or whatever host and make them work.
Chang did not replied for two weeks. "I thought I was fired", confessed Dr. Mussaelian. "With every day of his silence I more and more realized how crazy my idea was. Chang would conclude I was a schizophrenic and would terminate the contract. Chang finally responded and, to my surprise, he did not fire me. He had not bought my extraterrestrial theory but agreed to try to make my sequences work."
Biologists have attempted for years to make junk sequences express, without much success. Sometimes nothing turned out; sometimes it was junk again. It was not surprising. Grab an arbitrary portion of the excluded computer code and try to compile it. Most likely, it will fail. At best, it will produce bizarre results. Analyze the code carefully, fish out a whole function from the comments, and you may make it work. Because of careful Mussaelian’s statistical analysis 4 of the 200 sequences he selected, began working, producing tiny amounts of a chemical compounds.
"I was anxiously awaiting the response from Chang," says Dr. Mussaelian. "Would it be a more or less normal protein or something out of ordinary? The answer was shocking: it was a substance, known to be produced by several types of leukemia in men and animals. Surprisingly, three other sequences also produced cancer-related chemicals. It no longer looked like a coincidence. When one awakens a viable dormant gene, it produces cancer-related proteins. Researchers began searching Human Genome Project databases for the four genes they isolated from junk DNA. Eventually, three of the four were found there, listed as active, non-junk genes. This was not a big surprise: since cancer tissues produce the protein, there must be somewhere a gene, which codes it! The surprise came later: In the active, non-junk portion of the code the gene in question (the researchers called it "jhlg1", for junk human leukemia gene) was not preceded by the alu sequence, i.e. the /* symbol was missing. However, the closing */ symbol at the end of "jhlg1" was there. This explained why "jhlg1" was not expressed in the depth of the junk DNA but worked fine in the normal, active part of the genome. The one who wrote the basic genetic code for humans excluded portion of the big code by embracing them in /*... */ but missed some of the opening /* symbol. His compiler seems to be garbage, too: a good compiler, even from terrestrial Microsoft, would most likely refuse to compile such program at all.
Prof. Sam Chang with his students began searching for genes associated with various cancers, and almost in all instances they discovered that those genes are followed by the alu sequence (i.e. protein as a comment closing symbol */), but never preceded by the comment opening /* gene! "This explains why diseases result in cell damage and their death, whereas cancers lead to cell reproduction and growth. Because only few fragments from the big code are expressed, they never lead to coherent growth. What we get with cancer, is expression of only few of genes alien to humans and symbiosis with some genes of bacterial parasites that lead to illogical, bizarre and apparently meaningless chunks of living cells. The chunks have its own veins, arteries, and its own immune system that vigorously resists all our anti-cancer drugs.
"Our hypothesis is that a higher extraterrestrial life form was engaged in creating new life and planting it on various planets. Earth is just one of them. Perhaps, after programming, our creators grow us the same way we grow bacteria in Petri dishes. We can’t know their motives - whether it was a scientific experiment, or a way of preparing new planets for colonization, or is it long time ongoing business of seedling life in the universe. If we think about it in our human terms, the extraterrestrial programmers were most probably working on one big code consisting of several projects, and the projects should have produced various life forms for various planets. They have been also trying various solutions. They wrote the big code, executed it, did not like some function, changed them or added new one, executed again, made more improvements, tried again and again. Of course, soon or later it was behind schedule. Few deadlines have already passed. Then the management began pressing for an immediate release. The programmers were ordered to cut all their idealistic plans for the future and concentrate now on one (Earth) project to meet the pressing deadline. Very likely in a rush, the programmers cut down drastically the big code and delivered basic program intended for Earth. However, at that time they were (perhaps) not quite certain which functions of the big code may be needed later and which not, so they kept them all there. Instead of cleaning the basic program by deleting all the lines of the big code, they converted them into comments, and in the rush they missed few /* symbols in the comments here or there; thus presenting mankind with illogical growth of mass of cells we know as cancer."
There are three options to the problem. Either delete all the /* symbols and comments and clean this way the basic code, or add all the missing */ and avoid illogical mixing of the basic code with the big code. Alternatively, in the third option, remove all the / symbols and let work the basic code with the big code as a complete program. Unfortunately, none of these options are within our capacity. If we were able to efficiently insert genes into the chromosomes of living men, our breakthrough discovery would mean instant cure for all future cancer cases; at least from the programmer point of view. Theoretically, we can do it in a laboratory, but we have no practical means to implant the repaired DNA into living subjects. The mystery of "junk DNA" and cancer seems to be solved, but no quick cure shall be expected. The best thing we can do now is to try nourishing new, cancer-free line of humans with gradually debugged basic genetic code. That will take a long time. For us and our children, there is no hope on the horizon.
"However, from the programmer’s point of view, there is also positive outlook in it. What we see in our DNA is a program consisting of two versions, a big code and basic code. First fact is, the complete program was positively not written on Earth; that is now a verified fact. The second fact is, that genes by themselves are not enough to explain evolution; there must be something more in the game. What it is or where it is, we don’t kow. The third fact is, no creator of a new work, be it a composer, engineer or programmer, from Mars or Microsoft, will ever leave his work without the option for improvement or upgrade. Ingenious here is, that the upgrade is already enclosed - the "junk DNA" is nothing more than hidden and dormant upgrade of our basic code! We know for some time that certain cosmic rays have power to modify DNA. With this in mind, plausible solution is available. The extraterrestrial programmers may use just one flash of the right energy from somewhere in the Universe to instruct the basic code to remove all the /*…*/ symbols, fuse itself with the big code ("junk DNA") and jumpstart working of our whole DNA. That would change us forever, some of us within months, some of us within generations. The change would be not too much physical, (except no more cancers, diseases and short life), but it will catapult us intellectually. Suddenly, we will be in time comparable to coexistence of Neanderthals with Cromagnons. The old will be replaced giving birth to a new cycle. The complete program is elegant, very clever self-organizing, auto-executing, auto-developing and auto-correcting software for a highly advanced biological computer with build-in connection to the ageless energy and wisdom of the Universe. Software wise, within us is either short and diseased life, or potential for a super-intelligent super-being with a long and healthy life. This triggers puzzling questions - was the reduction to the basic code done by sloppy programmers in a rush (as it appears to us), or was the disabling of the big code purposeful act which can be cancelled by a "remote control" whenever desired?"
Soon or later, we have to come to grips with the unbelievable notion that every life on Earth carries genetic code for his extraterrestrial cousin and that evolution is not what we think it is. This discovery may well shake the very roots of humanity - our beliefs in our concept of God and in our own power over our destiny. With the right paradigm, we may discover one day that all forms of life and the whole Universe is just one huge intellectual exercise in thoughts expressed mathematically, by Design, by Creator
~KIROAN~
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