So the lady at the UN is an alien and she doesn’t even know it.

I’ve recently returned from ALIFE-XII – the 12th conference on artificial and simulated life, and it’s possibly a very good job that what we’ve been doing has snuck under the radar screens of various religious groups.

We can already “compile” wholly synthetic DNA to insert into existing cells, to cause them to do useful things. We are also more than halfway to making all the components of cells themselves. It turns out the control mechanisms are the easy part. We now have a very good understanding of the RNA mechanisms involved – they can be looked on as computational devices, there are structures analogous to the NAND, NOT, NOR, AND, OR etc gates that make up CPUs and memory.

Expect fully artificial life in the next 5-10 years, possibly sooner. And lab conditions found in nature that will cause life to self-assemble soon after that.

It won’t prove that Life came about this way; just that it could have, with no supernatural intervention needed.

There’s still room for the Almighty though: because we have no idea why the Universe happens to have physical constants that make the evolution of Life not just possible, but inevitable.

To illustrate self-organisation – take a bowl of mixed nuts. Brazils, hazelnuts, cashews, etc. Stir them well. Then gently shake for a couple of minutes, completely randomly. The Brazil nuts will rise to the top, as if an invisible hand had selected them, and placed them there.

Or look at crystals forming, organised patterns out of a homogenous mixture.

So the lady at the UN is an alien and she doesn’t even know it.