How much intelligence is in our DNA? -Relatively!

One of the most fascinating incremental discoveries of modern science is around our DNA, its history and what it makes of us, humans. The unanimous evidence surrounding the tree of life suggests that every single form of life on planet earth stems from the same DNA root - from the the tiniest bacteria to the humpback whale and the trees in the amazon forest. That’s right, the snail you snubbed the other day and you have the exact same root DNA. Although we all live on a planet that’s 4 Billion years old, the very first forms of life on earth have been found to be ‘only’ 200 Million years of age - that’s 0.2 Billion years- which is near nothing in the grand scheme of things. The evolution of species as demonstrated by many scientists and remarkably documented by Charles Darwin in 1859, then made this root DNA knock itself off in their wildest development dreams to get what we know today as flora and fauna (including humans) in their widest varieties -and we’re still evolving.

While we’re DNA-wise well differentiated from your friend the snail, we do have a staggering 99% DNA match with those flee-eaters we call apes. This means that the one percent difference rightfully allows us to classify them as primates. The best thing the most intelligent adult ape can do today is build a small wall of plastic bricks before rolling on the floor out of pride and joy. That extra tiny one percent allowed us humans to be where we are today including all the scientific breakthroughs but also the geo-political conflicts. From Aristotle fast forward to Copernicus (the sun is at the center of our system), Einstein (mass and energy are having an intimate relationship and it’s not a secret anymore - E=m.c2), Hubble (not the mission, the guy - the universe is expanding) all the way to Hawkins, astro-physicists have not ceased to astonish us with extra-ordinary discoveries. Yet, despite all these advances, Nobel Prizes and full dedication to the advancement of the human knowledge of our cosmos, we remain completely brain-blind to the vast majority of astro-physical phenomena, 70% of which is dark energy and 26% dark matter. That’s 96% of stuff we know absolutely nothing about. Nada! We know they both exist by mathematical deductions but we can’t measure their physical characteristics (if they are anything physical at all) because the available tools we currently have do not allow us to interact with them. The best proof of our blatant ignorance of 96% of the universe is the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions (1972 and 1973 respectively): In more than 20 years worth of data (last contacts in 2003 and 1995 respectively) received from both missions, we are still completely unable to explain why both spacecrafts decelerated more than our initial calculations. This is known as the Pioneer anomaly, and we know the anomaly represents nothing else but our current ignorance of what's out there. However the more things we discover, the more questions arise, because that’s our nature. But until the next Einstein is here, we’re still stuck.

In many thousands of years of human history, the closest we have come to understand about the laws that govern our universe is about 4%! Four Percent! -If that’s not humbling than what is?

Now, given there’s been demonstrations of possible early life on Mars (that’s many billions of years ago and we don’t need to dwell on evidence), one might legitimately ask the question on whether there is another concurrent life on another galaxy and whether it is DNA-based or of another form. In fact, they might have already visited us and decided to move on because, with our 4% knowledge, it’s not an intelligent place to be. My only hope is if the only thing they saw during their visit was the current presidential debate in the US- 'Please come again aliens, that’s not very representative of our species’ IQ'.

Jokes apart, what we learn from the above is: our DNA defines our intelligence levels among humans and our breakthroughs should make us increasingly humble relative to what we still don’t know. The day we’d be really visited by another species which has 1% of DNA more than we do, we’d all look like dogs watching TV and Donald Trump like a pimple on one of the dogs' butts.

In the spacetime of the Milky Way, there should be no physical place for egos. 

Have a nice day!

Credits: 

Photo:  Plantwisdom.org

References: NASA Missions, Neil deGrasse Tyson (The Inexplicable Universe, Series)