The Roots of Reality
In my podcast The Roots of Reality, I explore how the universe emerges from a Unified Coherence Framework. We also explore many other relevant topics in depth.
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The Roots of Reality
Earth's Information Engine: The Astonishing Scale of Planetary DNA
Have you ever stopped to consider that our tiny blue planet might be the most extraordinary information engine in the known universe? Prepare to have your mind blown as we dive into the astonishing mathematics of life's blueprint.
If we were to unravel all the DNA from every living organism on Earth—from microscopic bacteria to massive whales—and stretch it end to end, it would extend to the edge of the observable universe and back approximately 20 to 40 times. This isn't science fiction; it's the mathematical reality that forms the heart of what scientist Philip Lillian calls "The Cosmic DNA Paradox."
While humans might consider ourselves Earth's dominant species, our contribution to this vast genetic library is surprisingly modest. The true champions are bacteria—those invisible microorganisms inhabiting every conceivable niche on our planet. With an estimated 5×10^30 bacteria on Earth (more than all stars in the observable universe multiplied by a trillion), their collective DNA would stretch across the known universe seven times over. This revelation forces us to reconsider which forms of life contribute most significantly to our planet's biological information system.
Beyond just physical length, Earth's biosphere encodes an estimated 10^31 to 10^32 bits of structured, functional information. What makes our planet unique is the incredible concentration of this information within an extremely thin biological layer on one small world—an "ultra-dense coherence engine" constantly processing, evolving, and storing an unimaginable amount of detailed genetic data.
This perspective leads to a critical question: how do we measure the health of this planetary information system? Traditional biodiversity metrics like species counts don't capture the full picture of what's being lost. The proposed Biosphere Information Reduction Index (BIRI) offers a revolutionary approach to quantify changes in Earth's effective information budget over time, measuring not just organism counts but the quality and quantity of functional information they contain.
Subscribe now to join our exploration of life's greatest paradox and discover why conserving biodiversity means preserving the mos
Welcome to The Roots of Reality, a portal into the deep structure of existence.
Drawing from over 200 original research papers, we unravel a new Physics of Coherence.
These episodes are entry points to guide you into a much deeper body of work. Subscribe now, & begin tracing the hidden reality beneath science, consciousness & creation itself.
It is clear that what we're producing transcends the boundaries of existing scientific disciplines, while maintaining a level of mathematical, ontological, & conceptual rigor that not only rivals but in many ways surpasses Nobel-tier frameworks.
Originality at the Foundation Layer
We are not tweaking equations we are redefining the axioms of physics, math, biology, intelligence & coherence. This is rare & powerful.
Cross-Domain Integration Our models unify to name a few: Quantum mechanics (via bivector coherence & entanglement reinterpretation), Stellar Alchemy, Cosmology (Big Emergence, hyperfractal dimensionality), Biology (bioelectric coherence, cellular memory fields), coheroputers & syntelligence, Consciousness as a symmetry coherence operator & fundamental invariant.
This kind of cross-disciplinary resonance is almost never achieved in siloed academia.
Math Structures: Ontological Generative Math, Coherence tensors, Coherence eigenvalues, Symmetry group reductions, Resonance algebras, NFNs Noetherian Finsler Numbers, Finsler hyperfractal manifolds.
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Welcome deep divers to a journey that I guarantee will fundamentally reshape how you perceive our planet and, well, life itself. Picture, if you will, a single, impossibly fine thread. Now imagine. This thread is so intricately packed with information, so dense with the blueprints of existence, that if you could somehow pull it apart, unravel every single piece of it from every living organism on Earth, from the smallest bacterium to the largest whale, and lay it end to end, it would stretch far beyond the very edge of our observable universe. Not just once, but dozens and dozens of times over. Now, this isn't the fanciful plot of some sci-fi blockbuster. This is the astonishing, mind-boggling reality of the DNA contained within Earth's biosphere.
Speaker 2:It truly is a scale that just defies our everyday comprehension, and today we're plunging right into this profound concept We'll be exploring with Philip Lillian in his seminal 2024 paper, the Cosmic DNA Paradox Light's Information Web vividly describes as Earth's biosphere being an ultra-dense coherence engine, an ultra-dense coherence engine, wow. Yeah, and this isn't merely an intriguing metaphor. This concept radically challenges our most deeply held assumptions about Earth's biological significance in the grand cosmic scheme. It suggests our planet isn't just, you know, one amongst billions, but maybe a uniquely concentrated hub of biological information.
Speaker 1:That's a powerful idea, ultra dense coherence engine. It really makes me wonder what are the broader scientific or maybe even philosophical questions this paradox forces us to confront? Does it, for instance, shift how we search for extraterrestrial life, like maybe we should focus less on just finding water and more on finding conditions that could allow for this kind of extreme informational density and organization?
Speaker 2:That's an excellent way to frame it. Yeah, the cosmic DNA paradox certainly provokes thought across multiple disciplines. From a purely scientific standpoint, it forces us to ask, okay, what specific conditions or evolutionary pathways right here on Earth led to this incredible concentration of ordered information. Is density, you know, a common feature of life everywhere, or is it a really rare anomaly? And yes, for astrobiology it definitely suggests that merely detecting liquid water might just be the first, very basic step. If life's ultimate expression, or at least one major expression, is this complex, coherent information engine, then we might need to look for signatures of that organization, not just the raw ingredients.
Speaker 1:So the organization itself becomes the signal.
Speaker 2:Exactly and philosophically, it raises big questions about our planet's uniqueness and the very definition of life itself. Is it just about self-replication, or is it also about the capacity to generate and store these vast amounts of functional, detailed information?
Speaker 1:Okay, deep divers, let's really unpack this monumental idea. Our mission today is well pre-fold. First, we're going to try and grapple with the truly unfathomable physical scale and the sheer volume of detailed information encoded within Earth's collective DNA. Then we'll dive into the profound implications of this immense density, exploring what it really means for Earth to be this unparalleled information engine. And finally and this is crucial we'll introduce a groundbreaking new way to actually measure and track the health of this planetary information system, a metric that could totally transform our understanding of biodiversity loss.
Speaker 2:Yeah, get ready for some deeply thought-provoking insights into the genetic tapestry of life, because what we're about to explore reveals that our tiny blue marble is, in fact, an information powerhouse unlike anything we might have ever imagined before.
Speaker 1:All right, so let's start by trying to calibrate our intuition a bit. Most of us have a vague understanding of DNA. Maybe we picture a double helix from a biology class, or we just know it's the blueprint for life, but rarely do we truly grasp its physical scale when you aggregate all the DNA from all living things on Earth.
Speaker 2:Right. It's kind of like understanding that a single grain of sand is small, but never fully conceiving of the immense expanse of a desert or you know, the total volume of all the beaches on the entire planet.
Speaker 1:That cognitive leap is essential, then.
Speaker 2:Precisely.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Individual DNA strands are microscopic, totally invisible to the naked eye. Individual DNA strands are microscopic, totally invisible to the naked eye. Yet when you start to sum them up, the numbers quickly spiral into dimensions that require well cosmic scales to even begin to make sense. Lillian's work masterfully uses these cosmic comparisons to give us a tangible, albeit still mind-boggling, sense of scale. It's about moving from the infinitesimal to the truly immense.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's begin with something familiar to ground us Human DNA. We know that a single human cell contains about 6 feet or roughly 1.8 meters of DNA, which is already quite a lot of genetic material coiled and packed into a structure way too small to be seen without a powerful microscope.
Speaker 2:And that's just per cell, just one cell. When you consider that an average adult human body is composed of approximately 50 trillion, that's 5 times 10 to the 13 cells. The numbers just escalate incredibly rapidly 50 trillion cells. Yeah. So if you were to unspool the DNA from just one person and lay it out end to end, you'd have roughly 5.7 times 10 to the 10 miles. That's a staggering 57 billion miles of DNA 57 billion miles from one miles.
Speaker 1:That's a staggering 57 billion miles of DNA, 57 billion miles from one person.
Speaker 2:That's right To put that into perspective. 57 billion miles is enough to travel from Earth to the sun and back over 300 times. All from one single individual.
Speaker 1:That's truly an astonishing figure 57 billion miles of DNA per person. Ok, now let's scale that up further. Multiplying that by the roughly 8 billion people currently on Earth, the total human DNA on our planet aggregates to approximately 4.56 times 10 to the 20 miles 4.56 times 10 to the 20th. And to really put that into a cosmic context for you, that translates to an almost incomprehensible 77 million light years 77 million light years just from humans, just from humans.
Speaker 2:And even that immense figure 77 million light years which is roughly 8,000 times the diameter of our own Milky Way galaxy, it's still only about 0.00017 times the distance to the edge of the observable universe.
Speaker 1:Wow, so okay, it's monumentally huge in terrestrial terms, even galactic terms.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, but it's still just a tiny fraction when we zoom out to the ultimate cosmic scale. It gives us a starting point, sure, but the true scale of life's genetic library, well, that's yet to be revealed.
Speaker 1:All right, deep divers. If you thought that was impressive, prepare for a true revelation. Here's where it gets even more interesting and, frankly, quite humbling revelation. Here's where it gets even more interesting and, frankly, quite humbling the true cosmic weavers of DNA, the dominant force in this planetary information engine. They aren't us, it's bacteria. Oh, absolutely Bacteria, those tiny, invisible organisms that inhabit every conceivable niche on our planet, from the deepest oceans to the highest clouds, even inside our own body.
Speaker 2:Exactly. When we talk about the collective genetic material of Earth, bacteria are the dominant contributors by orders and orders of magnitude. Scientists estimate there are around 5 times 10 to the 30 bacteria on Earth.
Speaker 1:Five with 30 zeros.
Speaker 2:Yes, a five followed by 30 zeros, a number so large it's almost beyond human comprehension. To give you a sense of that, it's more stars than there are in the observable universe multiplied by a trillion, all living right here on one planet, and each and every single one of those individual bacteria possesses its own genome.
Speaker 1:Right, and while a single bacterium's genome is significantly smaller than ours, on average about 4 million base pairs, which measures what roughly 0.05 inches or 1.27 millimeters long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tiny.
Speaker 1:Tiny individually, but the sheer astronomical number of these organisms changes everything. The cumulative length of their DNA is just well, it's truly cosmic.
Speaker 2:It really is. When you sum up all that bacterial DNA, the combined length is approximately 3.94 times 10 to the 24 miles.
Speaker 1:Okay, wait, 3.94 times 10 to the 24th miles.
Speaker 2:That's the estimate, and to translate that into light years, it's an astonishing 670 billion light years 670 billion light years. Yes, and this is where our perception of scale really starts to break down, because these numbers are no longer just large, they're genuinely mind bending.
Speaker 1:OK, 670 billion light years. Let's try to anchor that number for everyone, because it's so vast that almost loses meaning. For reference, the observable universe you know, the part of the cosmos from which light has had time to reach us has a radius of about 46.5 billion light years and a diameter of 93 billion light years. So that's the scale we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Right. So here's the truly mind bending comparison the bacterial DNA alone, just from bacteria emanating from this single, relatively small planet, it would stretch to the edge of the observable universe and back roughly seven times.
Speaker 1:Seven times back and forth.
Speaker 2:Back and forth seven times, or to put it even more dramatically, it's enough to reach the furthest edges of the observable universe approximately 14 times over. That's one way.
Speaker 1:I mean that figure dramatically dwarfs the cosmic dimensions we typically grapple with. It makes the human contribution, which seemed huge just moments ago, seem almost negligible by comparison.
Speaker 2:It really does. It highlights that the vast majority of Earth's biological information highway is built by its most diminutive residents.
Speaker 1:That's utterly incredible. We're talking about microscopic life forms collectively producing a DNA strand long enough to traverse the known universe many, many times over, and that's just bacteria. So when we factor in all other life, you know plants, some with absolutely massive genomes, fungi, archaea, the countless viruses that are constantly replicating the numbers become even more staggering.
Speaker 2:Indeed, when we add in the DNA from every other living organism on Earth plants, fungi, archaea, protists, viruses, everything the total estimated length of all DNA reaches an astounding 425 to 226 miles 10 to the 25th to 10 to the 26th miles. Which translates to approximately 1.7 to 17 trillion light years. It's a range, of course, that acknowledges the immense difficulty in precise quantification, but even the lower bound 1.7 trillion light years is just breathtaking 1.7 to 17 trillion light years.
Speaker 1:So to really drive this home deep divers. This means the combined DNA from all life forms on our tiny planet would span the entire observable universe around 20 to 40 times over 20 to 40 times. The sheer physical dimension of the detailed genetic information contained within our biosphere is truly beyond comprehension, and it's all concentrated right here into this one small blue sphere.
Speaker 2:And this brings us directly to what Lillian terms, the ontological hmm, you know the real core of the cosmic DNA paradox.
Speaker 1:The ontological hmm.
Speaker 2:I like that. What does this all mean? Fundamentally, the paradox lies in this profound observation All of this immense length and information, this unbelievably vast genetic library, it's all meticulously encoded within the delicate, self-organizing systems of living cells and, critically, it's all contained within an incredibly thin biological layer right here on Earth.
Speaker 1:Right here.
Speaker 2:It's a colossal concentration of highly ordered, structured information in one very specific and actually surprisingly fragile place. It forces us to wonder about the inherent significance of such a unique informational node in the vastness of the cosmos.
Speaker 1:That's the real kicker, isn't it? It's not just that the DNA is long, it's that this vast, almost unimaginable amount of highly structured functional information is all compressed and contained right here on this one tiny planet.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:It suggests a level of informational density and organization that, as you said, compels us to reconsider Earth's unique place in the universe. It's like a living, breathing data center.
Speaker 2:That's a great analogy.
Speaker 1:And that leads us perfectly into the next crucial point. Because while the physical length of all this DNA is just astonishing, the true marvel and the core of this cosmic DNA paradox isn't just how far it stretches, but what it contains. We're not just talking about raw material here. We're talking about the detail, the richness, the complexity of the information encoded within it, its density, its coherent storage.
Speaker 2:Exactly right. The shift in perspective from mere fluidical length to the information content is absolutely critical here. Think about the difference between, say, the sheer volume of paper in a massive library versus the actual knowledge, the stories, the insights contained within all those books.
Speaker 1:Good comparison.
Speaker 2:The paper has a physical dimension, sure, but its true value, its essence, lies in the narrative and the detailed information it holds. Dna is the ultimate biological library and we're trying to understand its information budget, its actual, detailed content.
Speaker 1:So how do we even begin to quantify this incredibly detailed information? Let's go back to our starting point again A single human genome. It contains approximately 3.2 billion base pairs, those ATCG letters that form our genetic code. Now, if we translate that into digital terms, using a fairly conservative estimate, it equates to roughly six gigabits of information per cell.
Speaker 2:Six gigabits per cell.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of data for something you can't even see with the naked eye. It's a testament to nature's incredible miniaturization really something you can't even see with the naked eye.
Speaker 2:It's a testament to nature's incredible miniaturization. Really it is indeed, and scaling that up to the entire biosphere, across all life forms, dna is estimated to encode a staggering 1031 to 1032 bits of structured information 10 to the 31 to 10 to the 32 bits. And this is not just random data. This is highly ordered, functional, deeply detailed information that dictates everything from how a single protein folds to the incredibly complex dynamics of entire ecosystems. It truly is an astronomical concentration of coherent, functional data, all meticulously arranged within the genetic code.
Speaker 1:That number of 31 to 2032 bits feels like another one of those figures that's almost too big to grasp. 31 to 2032 bits feels like another one of those figures that's almost too big to grasp. But Lillian's work makes an even bolder claim, initially suggesting this biological information is approaching the total estimated information capacity of the observable universe, which is often cited as around a 1090 bits for quantum states.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that initial comparison is striking.
Speaker 1:It sounds like Earth holds almost all the universe's knowledge. That's a pretty wild thought to process and really highlights the density of what we have right here.
Speaker 2:It is, and it definitely speaks to the incredible density of information packed into our biosphere. However, what's fascinating is a crucial refinement Lillian makes to that comparison. While the initial statement highlights the immense concentration, a more conservative and perhaps more precise calculation using something called effective entropy, which is a more nuanced measure of the actual functional information, not just theoretical maximums and we'll dig into this shortly suggests something different.
Speaker 1:Okay, a refinement. What does that calculation show?
Speaker 2:Well, this more refined calculation suggests that the combined information from bacteria, archaea, viruses and human cells sums to approximately 3.9 by 137 bits.
Speaker 1:Okay, so 3.9 times 10 to the 37th bits, that's still a colossal number, but significantly smaller than 10 to the 90th. What does this new refined figure mean in the grand scheme of things?
Speaker 2:Right. This is where we encounter what we can call the locally huge, cosmically tiny paradox. What's fascinating here is that both statements can in a sense be true at the same time. This 3.9 by 1037 bits is indeed a tiny fraction mathematically it's roughly 3.9 by 1053 of a theoretical 1090-bit universe.
Speaker 1:Okay, so infinitesimally small compared to the universe's theoretical max capacity.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. Yes, the absolute information content of Earth's biosphere is cosmically tiny compared to the theoretical maximum of all possible quantum states in the entire universe.
Speaker 1:But the locally huge part still stands right. It's about how that incredibly detailed information is concentrated and organized right here. That's the key.
Speaker 2:Precisely that's the crux of it. While the absolute quantity might be a tiny fraction of the universal potential, its density and its organization within that incredibly thin biological layer on Earth are locally immense and arguably profoundly significant. It's not about being the most information in the universe in terms of raw bits, but about being an unparalleled engine for concentrating and coherently storing highly ordered, incredibly detailed and functional information.
Speaker 1:Ah, okay, it's the difference between a universe maybe full of random noise or simple patterns and this tiny yet exquisitely designed supercomputer right here.
Speaker 2:That's a good way to think about it. This concentration of coherent, functional information could indeed make Earth a uniquely significant entity in the cosmos, regardless of its fraction of the total theoretical capacity.
Speaker 1:So Earth truly is an ultra-dense coherence engine. It's not just a collection of life forms passively existing. It's a living, breathing, planetary-scale data center constantly processing, evolving and storing an unimaginable amount of functional, detailed data.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:That really reframes how we should think about our planet's biological uniqueness, doesn't it Moving beyond just the presence of life to the quality and the density of the detailed information that life contains?
Speaker 2:It certainly does. It puts the focus squarely on the complexity and the richness of the information itself.
Speaker 1:It certainly does. It puts the focus squarely on the complexity and the richness of the information itself. Ok, so if Earth's biosphere truly is this ultra dense coherence engine, this living breathing data center packed with detailed information, then it raises a really profound challenge how do we effectively track its health and complexity? We constantly hear about biodiversity loss, species going extinct, but how do we quantify the information that is being lost? This isn't just about losing species counts, right. It's about losing the underlying detailed genetic blueprints and the functional instructions they contain.
Speaker 2:This is a crucial and incredibly pressing question in conservation and ecology today, and it leads us directly to Lillian's powerful proposed metric, the Biosphere Information Reduction Index, or BRI. Bri Okay, yeah, bri. It provides a quantifiable, hopefully auditable way to understand the true impact of human activities on this planetary information engine. It aims to give us a much more nuanced picture than just traditional biodiversity metrics, like species counts alone.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's dive deep into this B-I-R-I concept. The core of this new metric is something called the effective information of the biosphere, or EIB. So what exactly is the EIB and what's it designed to measure?
Speaker 2:So the EID is designed to measure the total functional information contained within living systems at any given time. Think of it as Earth's dynamic information budget, it's current informational wealth, you could say Crucially. It's not just raw data like counting all the A's, t's, c's and G's. It's about the detailed information that actually does something, the information that contributes to the life, the function, the resilience of ecosystems.
Speaker 1:Okay, so functional information, like the difference between a hard drive just full of random jumbled files versus one full of perfectly organized executable programs that actually run.
Speaker 2:That's a very good analogy. It's about the meaningful, detailed genetic instructions and there's a specific formula proposed for this right E-I-B-E-H-A-U-A-E-A-E-A-A-E-C-A-T. Can you break that down for us piece by piece?
Speaker 1:Okay, let's try. First up is AAT.
Speaker 2:Right. Ngt stands for the number of individuals, or even particles like viruses, belonging to a specific group G at a given time. T. So, simply put, the population size for each type of organism is a critical factor A bigger population means more copies of that group's genetic information, contributing to the total budget.
Speaker 1:Got it? So? The sheer number of organisms is one critical part of our planet's informational budget. More individuals, more information copies. But what about the size of the instruction manual itself for each organism? That's where LG comes in, correct?
Speaker 2:Precisely. Legt is the average genome length, usually measured in base pairs, for that specific group G. This accounts for how much information can potentially be stored by each individual of that group. Generally speaking, a longer genome has the capacity to hold more detailed instructions and thus potentially more information.
Speaker 1:Right. Think of it as the number of pages in the instruction manual More pages, potentially more detailed instructions. And then there's the last term HGIT. This sounds like maybe the most complex and perhaps the most fascinating part of the equation. This is where the detailed quality of information really comes into play, isn't it? What is this effective entropy per base pair, and why is it so important for measuring functional information?
Speaker 2:HGT. The effective entropy per base pair is indeed the most nuanced and, I think, the most critical element in this whole calculation. You see, while a single base pair theoretically can hold two bits of information, because there are four possibilities A, t, c or G real genomes are far more complex and constrained than just random sequences.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's not quite two bits in reality.
Speaker 2:Generally not. Hg is a more realistic figure, typically estimated to be somewhere between 1.5 to 1.9 bits per base pair for most genomes. This isn't about the maximum possible information. It's a measure of the actual, functional and meaningful information that is encoded within that genome sequence. It cleverly accounts for biological realities like redundancies, conserved regions or preferred sequences that reduce the theoretical maximum. It helps ensure we capture the useful detailed information, not just potential storage space.
Speaker 1:That's a really critical distinction. It's about the quality and the meaningfulness of the information, the actual detail instructions being used, not just the raw data quantity. So what specific factors influence this effective entropy? What makes it less than the theoretical maximum of two bits per base pair, and how do we actually measure that detailed information content?
Speaker 2:Well, there are several key factors, and each contributes to a more precise understanding of the detailed information content. First, there's something called base composition entropy. This simply considers the actual frequencies of A, t, c and G within a given genome. For instance, if a genome is heavily biased towards, say, a and T bases, it inherently carries less new information per base pair than one with a more even distribution of all four bases.
Speaker 1:Ah, so even the basic letters themselves and their relative abundance contribute to the informational richness. It reflects how optimized a genome might be for encoding complex instructions.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Second, we have neighbor dependencies. This captures the biases in how deets or trinucleotides, so sequences of two or three bases right next to each other, occur. You see, genes aren't just random strings of letters. Certain short sequences are much more common or much rarer than others. This is often due to functional constraints, the organism's evolutionary history or maybe the need to form specific protein structures. For example, some codons, those three-letter genetic words, are preferred over others, even if they code for the same amino acid. This reveals a layer of details, sort of hidden information about the specific language of that particular genome.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's not just about the individual letters, but how they're commonly arranged, the specific patterns they form and the context of those patterns within the larger genetic narrative. That's a much deeper level of detail.
Speaker 2:It is. And third, there's genome compressibility. This is a fascinating one, it is. And third, there's genome compressibility. This is a fascinating one. It refers to how efficiently the entire genome sequence can be compressed using sophisticated computer algorithms like Lempel-Ziv or PPM.
Speaker 1:Like zipping a file on your computer. Exactly like that. Think of it this way A highly compressible genome often indicates more inherent redundancy, simpler repeating patterns or maybe a less complex overall informational structure. Conversely, a genome that's hard to compress suggests greater complexity, less repetition and thus likely a higher functional information content per base pair. It's a clever way to measure how uniquely packed the detailed information is.
Speaker 2:That makes sense. More randomness or complexity is harder to compress and I understand there are even optional but incredibly important layers that could add even more depth to this measure of information. Beyond just the linear ATCG sequence. These sound like the subtle details that truly reflect the complexity of life.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. The model allows for incorporating these, which is crucial for capturing the full picture. For example, epigenetics is a fascinating and rapidly evolving layer of information. This includes modifications like DNA methylation states, where tiny chemical tags are added to the DNA without actually changing the underlying sequence of A, t, c or G.
Speaker 2:Right, the stuff that turns genes on or off. Exactly, these modifications act like switches, turning genes on or off or maybe fine-tuning their expression levels. This dynamic layer can add about one bit of information per variable site, effectively providing an additional flexible instruction set written sort of on top of the DNA itself. It's crucial for things like cellular differentiation and how organisms respond to their environment. It's incredibly detailed information about how the primary genetic instructions are read and used.
Speaker 1:There's a whole other level of control.
Speaker 2:It is. And then there are also structural or 3D codes. This refers to functional diversity carried by specific motifs or repetitive sequences that we used to think might be junk DNA but now realize often play active, detailed roles. These roles might be in gene regulation, maintaining chromosome structure or even driving cellular processes. For instance, specific ways the DNA folds or loops upon itself can pull distant genes into close proximity, affecting how they're expressed together. These are really sophisticated, higher-order informational structures that profoundly influence how the basic genetic information is accessed and utilized.
Speaker 1:Wow, this level of detail about effective entropy HGT is truly illuminating. It makes it crystal clear that we're not just counting raw data bits but meticulously measuring the meaningful, functional, detailed information that actually contributes to biodiversity and ecosystem function. This really drives home the detailed information aspect of Lillian's work and why it's so critical to move beyond simple counts of species or base pairs.
Speaker 2:It absolutely does. It moves us beyond a simplistic view of genetic material as just a static data storage medium and forces us to appreciate the incredibly sophisticated and detailed ways information is actually stored, regulated, dynamically accessed and utilized within living systems. This depth of understanding is paramount if we're serious about assessing the true health and the informational wealth of the entire biosphere.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, once we can accurately calculate the EIB Earth's dynamic information budget. Considering all this detail, how does the BRI Index actually work as a health tracker for the biosphere? How does it tell us if we're gaining or losing this invaluable detailed information?
Speaker 2:Well, the BRI index itself, the Biosphere Information Reduction Index, is actually elegantly simple in its definition. Once you have the EIB value, it's just BIID, eib, EIB baseline.
Speaker 1:So current information budget divided by a past budget.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Its purpose is to provide a standardized comparison over time. It takes the current effective information of the biosphere, eib, calculated for time today, and compares it to a carefully established historical baseline, eib, for example. That baseline might be the estimated EIB back in 1950, or maybe even from a pre-industrial era, before human impact became so globally significant.
Speaker 1:And what does that comparison, that ratio, actually reveal to us? What's the output of this new comprehensive metric telling us?
Speaker 2:It provides a quantitative and hopefully auditable metric to track information loss. This loss is what we commonly refer to, perhaps too simply, as biodiversity reduction, especially when it's due to human impact. So BIRI becomes a direct, objective measure of how our collective actions are affecting Earth's fundamental information engine. Instead of just saying species are declining, it aims to tell us how much functional and detailed information is actually vanishing from the planetary genetic library. A BIRI value of less than one indicates a reduction in information compared to that baseline period.
Speaker 1:This sounds incredibly powerful. It allows us to quantify the loss of these incredibly detailed genetic constructions, not just the organisms carrying them. But I have to say it also sounds incredibly complex to actually measure in practice. How would scientists practically go about computing each deli-shee entropy, this effective entropy per base pair from real world data, especially for the countless microorganisms out there?
Speaker 2:That's a very fair point and it's definitely a challenge, but this is where practical sub-indices come into play, drawing from the power of increasingly sophisticated metagenomic data analysis.
Speaker 1:Metagenomics, that's, sequencing DNA directly from environmental samples, right Like scooping up soil or seawater.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It involves sampling DNA directly from environmental sources soil, ocean, water, the air, animal guts, sediments, you name it and then analyzing the collective genetic material from everything. In that sample, From this vast sea of genetic data, scientists could measure several specific components that, when appropriately weighted, would roll up into that crucial HGD value for various groups of organisms within the sample.
Speaker 1:Okay, can you give us some concrete examples of these components, these sub-indices? How do they help us understand the detailed information content in a practical way?
Speaker 2:Certainly, One key sub-index mentioned is K-mer entropy. K-mers are simply short DNA sequences, say 5 to 10 base pairs long, maybe longer depending on the analysis. Gamer entropy measures the diversity and the distribution of these short sequences within a collected environmental DNA sample. If the variety of these short sequences decreases significantly or if certain patterns become overwhelmingly dominant, it signals a reduction in the functional and detailed information content.
Speaker 1:So less variety in the short DNA words suggests a less complex or more homogenized genetic landscape.
Speaker 2:Precisely. For instance, a noticeable decline in K-mer entropy in ocean samples might signal a reduction in the sheer diversity of microbial metabolic pathways present, which could have really significant cascading effects on global nutrient cycles. Ok, what else? Another crucial component is gene family richness. This looks at the number of different gene groups or gene families present within a community and also their diversity across various clades or evolutionary groups. More richness generally means a wider array of functional capabilities are present in that ecosystem and thus more detailed functional information. So if we observe a decline in gene family richness in, say, a forest soil sample, it could indicate that a critical array of genes responsible for important functions like nutrient cycling or decomposition is being lost from that system.
Speaker 1:Makes sense. And what about capturing the evolutionary uniqueness of this detailed information? Is there a way to measure that?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's where phylogenetic distinctiveness, often measured using a metric called Faith's PD, comes in. This quantifies how evolutionarily unique different species or genetic lineages are within a given sample. It's not just about numbers, but about evolutionary history. Losing a species that represents a deep, ancient branch on the tree of life means losing a vast amount of distinct, irreplaceable and highly detailed evolutionary information that has no close relatives to compensate for its loss.
Speaker 1:So it weights the information based on its evolutionary rarity.
Speaker 2:In essence. Yes, we also need to look at mobilome diversity. The mobilome refers to the variety of mobile genetic elements, things like plasmids and phages or viruses that infect bacteria. Think of them as genetic free agents that can jump between organisms or integrate themselves into genomes. Their diversity is actually a measure of the capacity for genetic innovation and rapid adaptation within populations.
Speaker 1:Ah, so the advantage of change and adapt is itself a form of functional information.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's a critical form of functional information that allows life to respond dynamically to environmental changes. A rich and diverse mobilome suggests a dynamic, adaptable and resilient information system.
Speaker 1:Okay, fascinating. And finally epigenetics, which you mentioned earlier as an optional layer for H2T. Can that be measured from environmental samples too?
Speaker 2:Potentially yes, although it's more challenging currently. Where the data is available and sufficiently robust, epigenome diversity can also be included. This would track changes in those epigenetic markers, those chemical tags, like methylation, that modify gene expression without altering the underlying DNA sequence itself. A reduction in epigenome diversity across populations could mean a loss of flexibility in how organisms respond to environmental cues effectively, reducing the dynamic range of their genetic instruction set.
Speaker 1:So all these components chamerentropy, gene families, phylogenetic distinctness, mobilome, epigenome these practical measurements, weighted appropriately, would collectively roll up into that HGG value for each biological group in the sample.
Speaker 2:That's the idea. It allows us to build a picture of the effect of entropy from the ground up, using real world data.
Speaker 1:This truly grounds the somewhat abstract concept of an information engine into something measurable and potentially actionable. It allows us to pinpoint what kind of detailed information is being lost. Not just that something is disappearing, but let's consider the stark reality here. What kind of impact are we actually talking about if we start losing this information, even subtly? Can you give us that what-if scenario from Lillian's paper that illustrates the potential scale of this loss?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's quite sobering. Consider this illustrative example Lillian provides. Imagine a seemingly small environmental event. Let's say, 40% of all terrestrial bacteria experience just a 20% drop in their average effective entropy. That's their HECT, their detailed functional information per base pair.
Speaker 1:Okay, so not extinction, just a reduction in the informational complexity and detailedness within existing bacterial populations, maybe due, to, say, widespread environmental homogenization from intensive agriculture or the pervasive selective pressure of antibiotics.
Speaker 2:Exactly those kinds of pressures. Now what would that seemingly modest 20% drop in HA for 40% of soil bacteria mean for the total EIB? Earth's Information Budget?
Speaker 1:What's the damage?
Speaker 2:The calculation suggests this would result in a change in EIB, a delta EIB or EIB, of approximately 2.7 by 8, down 36 bits 2.7 times 10 to the 36th bits. Lost, lost, vanished from the planetary genetic library. That's a truly staggering amount of functional, detailed information. To try and put that into some kind of perspective, it's roughly 70,000 times the total estimated information content of all human cells on Earth today 70,000 times the information in all of humanity lost from a subtle shift in bacteria.
Speaker 2:That's the potential scale. According to this calculation, it's like losing billions upon billions of exquisitely detailed, functional instruction manuals from a universal library, not just a few redundant pages. This kind of loss could profoundly affect the collective intelligence, adaptability and resilience of the entire biosphere in ways we probably can't even predict.
Speaker 1:Wow. That scenario really underscores a critical and often overlooked point. Pressures ones that don't necessarily lead to immediate visible extinctions of entire species can potentially lead to massive and perhaps irreversible reductions in the Earth's detailed biological information budget.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right.
Speaker 1:This isn't just about losing charismatic megafauna, as important as they are. It's about potentially eroding the fundamental informational fabric of life at its deepest, most granular microbial level.
Speaker 2:Precisely. It highlights the invisible but potentially profound impact of our activities on the very architecture of life's information systems. The biosphere isn't just an engine. It's maybe more like a planetary scale supercomputer, and we risk accidentally deleting critical operating code without even realizing it.
Speaker 1:So how do we move forward with such a powerful yet clearly complex proposed metric like B-I-R-I? Lillian's paper doesn't just stop at the theory. It actually proposes a concrete global study to try and make B-I-R-I a reality, doesn't it? This feels like it has to move beyond just an academic exercise.
Speaker 2:It does absolutely. It's presented as a global call to action, really, and the methodology proposed is quite clear and certainly ambitious. The first key step outlined is to fix a baseline. This would involve leveraging the amazing techniques we now have for ancient DNA analysis. We could use archived specimens from museums and scientific collections alongside analyzing environmental DNA extracted from sediment cores and maybe even ice cores that trap ancient biological material.
Speaker 1:So using the past preserved in museums and the Earth itself to set the starting point.
Speaker 2:Exactly. This allows us to establish a robust historical EIB value, giving us that crucial reference point for comparison. Maybe we set the baseline at a pre-industrial era or perhaps a specific historical date like 1950, before the great acceleration of human impact really took off.
Speaker 1:Okay, establish the baseline. What's next?
Speaker 2:The second major step would be to build a current global panel. This would involve establishing a coordinated worldwide network to collect standardized environmental DNA, or ADNA, and metagenomes from across a wide range of diverse biomes. Imagine a global effort to regularly sample oceans, forests, deserts, freshwater systems, agricultural lands, even urban environments, all using the same methods. Standardized protocols would be absolutely key here to ensure that data is comparable across different regions and different research groups over time.
Speaker 1:A global monitoring network for planetary information, and then the actual calculation and reporting to turn all this raw data into actionable insights.
Speaker 2:Correct. The next crucial step is to compute and publish the current EID values for various regions, maybe different biomes and globally, and then from that calculate the BIRA index itself. Critically, lillian emphasizes that these publications should include uncertainty bands, always acknowledging the inherent complexities and potential variations in data collection and analysis. We need to be honest about the error bars.
Speaker 1:Transparency is key.
Speaker 2:Definitely, and the goal would be to update this annually, or perhaps biennially, providing a transparent, ongoing assessment of our planet's biological information health, something accessible not just to scientists, but to policymakers and the public as well.
Speaker 1:You know, this isn't just a fascinating scientific exercise for researchers. It truly feels like a call to action for all of us. It offers you, the listener, a clearer, much more detailed lens through which to understand and evaluate the true wealth of our living planet. To understand and evaluate the true wealth of our living planet, it moves beyond simple, sometimes abstract biodiversity metrics, like species counts, to a deeper appreciation of the complex, detailed information that underpins all life and really defines Earth's unique place in the universe.
Speaker 2:It absolutely reframes our responsibility, doesn't it? It transforms biodiversity from just a collection of species we might find interesting or useful into an irreplaceable planetary information budget, a budget that we are either diligently safeguarding or, perhaps more accurately, right now dangerously depleting. It really feels like it's about preserving the operating system of life itself.
Speaker 1:What an incredible deep dive we've been on today. Deep divers, seriously mind-bending stuff. We started with the absolutely mind-boggling physical length of DNA, this single thread, metaphorically speaking, long enough to wrap the observable universe dozens and dozens of times over. Then we moved to its astonishing information density, where Earth's biosphere acts as this unparalleled, ultra-dense coherence engine, just packed with incredibly detailed, functional information.
Speaker 2:And we didn't stop at just the awe-inspiring scale, did we? We introduced a potentially groundbreaking metric the Biosphere Information Reduction Index, or BIRI. It's designed to quantify and track the health of this planetary information engine by measuring its effective information budget, taking into account all that nuanced, detailed information hidden within the genetic code itself the base composition, the neighbor, dependencies, compressibility, even epigenetics.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it moves beyond just counting species to try and understand the underlying informational richness and its vulnerability. It's a whole new perspective. The cosmic DNA paradox serves as such a profound reminder of the immense and often completely invisible richness concentrated within our living world. It really challenges our perception of our planet's unique place in the universe. It shows us that our tiny blue marble isn't just special because it harbors life, but perhaps because of the sheer concentrated complexity and the incredibly detailed information that life contains a true marvel in the cosmos.
Speaker 2:It's a powerful realization, absolutely, and it raises, I think, a really important question for you, our listeners, to ponder long after this deep dive concludes. If we are losing biological information at an accelerating rate, as this B-I-R-I metric aims to track, what exactly are we losing? Beyond just the species counts? We hear about what might be the ultimate, perhaps incomprehensible cost to the very cosmic DNA paradox that uniquely defines our living planet and, maybe just as importantly, what hidden potentials, what future solutions encoded in that information might vanish along with it, before we even discover them.
Speaker 1:It's a lot to think about, isn't it? The scale of the information and the potential scale of the loss. The responsibility feels immense. Thank you for joining us on this exploration on the deep dive. Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning and maybe take a moment to appreciate the incredible, detailed informational tapestry of life that's all around us and within us.
