Geneticists Alexei Sharov of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore and biologist Richard Gordon of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida applied Moore's Law to biological systems.
And they received sensational results: life did not originate on Earth, but in some place that existed before the formation of our planet.
Back in 1965, Moore's Law was personally discovered by Gordon E. Moore - three years later he became one of the founders of Intel. Discovered on the basis of observations, speaking with them in the journal Electronics. Where he presented his forecast for the development of semiconductor technology and other microelectronics. Moore predicted that the number of transistors in microcircuits would double annually.
As a result, processors will become cheaper and faster and more miniaturized. After 10 years, Moore corrected himself, specifying that the doubling of transistors will occur at intervals of two years. This revelation is called Moore's Law.
With the help of Moore's Law, it is quite possible to predict the future by analyzing the past and present state of a certain complex and developing system. Sharov and Gordon undertook to solve the inverse problem - they tried to describe the past. For which we have developed special algorithms.
Before applying their algorithms to biology, scientists tested them on semiconductor technology, thanks to which Moore's Law gained the right to exist. They calculated that the first chip was supposed to appear sometime in 1960. And so it was.
After a successful test, Sharov and Gordon replaced electronic elements in their calculations with nucleotides - building blocks that became more complex in the process of evolution of DNA and RNA molecules. And they found that the doubling of the complexity of the genome will occur every 376 million years. From which it followed that life began about 10 billion years ago.
It turns out that the Earth is not the cradle of the living. After all, it is only 4.5 billion years old. It turns out that life appeared even before our planet was formed. That is, somewhere else.
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Calculations using Moore's law will please, first of all, supporters of the so-called panspermia - the hypothesis that life was brought to Earth from Space. Maybe in the form of bacteria, maybe in the form of duodenum chains that arrived on comets or meteorites. Or together with aliens.
By the way, those who believe that somewhere in the Universe live aliens who have far outstripped us in development will also be delighted. Why not, since life is already 10 billion years.
Brothers in mind, who are much smarter than us, could develop methods of high-speed movement in space. It is possible that they manage to fly even faster than light through some "holes" in the tissue of the Universe. Then we can count on aliens to visit us. Or have already visited. The calculations of Sharov and Gordon give such hope.
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Contact with aliens is inevitable in 251 years
Samuel Arbesman of Harvard Medical School in Boston, amazed many times over the fact that the rule of thumb - Moore's law - has become almost a law of nature, decided to apply it to astronomy. But already to the analysis of the future.
The scientist recruited Greg Laughlin from the University of California, Santa Cruz as a companion. And together they started predictions in the field of detecting exoplanets - those that other stars have. They started, like Moore, from previous achievements.
Arbesman and Laughlin took into account that the first planet outside the solar system was discovered in 1988. That now the number of known exoplanets has exceeded one thousand. And several hundred claim to be similar to our Earth in size, mass, location at their star and temperature at the surface.
Researchers have calculated the likely trend. And it turned out: the first sister of the Earth - with inhabitants of the "terrestrial type" - will be discovered by 2020 with a probability of 75 percent. And by 2264 extraterrestrial life is bound to be found. Almost. The probability of this event is estimated at 95 percent. So at least it comes out according to Moore's law, if we estimate it for the foreseeable Universe.
Arbesman and Laughlin, however, do not specify whether there will be planets at the time indicated by them with intelligent inhabitants of the "terrestrial type". But obviously the chances of such a miracle are less.