GZipping Life Forms: Deflate Reveals Bare-Bones 245
An anonymous reader writes "To distinguish images derived from living vs. non-living sources, USC and NASA JPL researchers report today using the standard gzip compression utility. As a measure of overall pattern complexity, they find that the inherent pixel content of biologically generated fossils produces higher image compression ratios [more data redundancy], compared to their non-biological counterparts. The more the file shrinks, the more likely it is that a living process was involved. A test is live online here. This extends the simple, but powerful, uses of gzip to biogenic fossil detectors, in addition to spam cop filters, DNA sequence comparisons, digital camera image crunchers, etc. In nine months, the two Mars rovers will send back the first microscopic-scale images of Mars rocks, which should be amenable to some of these same techniques: thus gzipping is apparently pretty zippy."
I compress.. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure I should be flattered that the best way to tell a picture of me from a picture of a rock is that I have more redundant image data.
A-ha! (Score:5, Funny)
So when we compress the ultimate, super-duper intelligent life form we get a two byte file containing "42"
Excellent... (Score:5, Funny)
gzip gates (Score:2, Funny)
Be Humble (Score:5, Funny)
So that tells me that life contains less data then non-life.
Perhaps sophisticated life (human life?) contains even less data than non-sophisticated life. So the smarter we get, the more predictable we get, and the less data we contain.
Perhaps we will someday get smart enough to be totally compressed to one bit. In the time I thought about this concept, I think my gzip file got even more compressed. Hmm....
I told you so! (Score:3, Funny)
I was wondering... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I compress.. (Score:5, Funny)
this might have a few glitches (Score:5, Funny)
This post can't be compressed.
The Mars fossil IS made by life; my wife is not. (Score:5, Funny)
at the comparison page [astrobio.net] attached to the article that lets you run the same test on images that the researchers tried. In a startling discovery that is sure to earn me a Nobel Prize for Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Marital Relations, I was told the following:
"Answer: Image 1 [the Mars image](1.43702451394759 % compression) has a higher complexity measure than image 2[the image of my wife] (0.773501341151519 % compression), and thus image 1 is more probably biogenic."
Not only does this prove that there was once life on Mars, but it also proves that my wife is some sort of robot. Further research will be undertaken pending receipt of my prize money.
The.. (Score:2, Funny)
Mad Scientist: "Fire up the GZip Continueum Transfunctioner!"
Operator: "Okay, Boss"
*Bizzzttt*
Re:The Mars fossil IS made by life; my wife is not (Score:5, Funny)
The problem here is that your wife is wearing clothes. Clothes are man made.
If you send me a picture of your unclothed wife, I'll be happy to, uhm, test this theory.
I am not (Score:5, Funny)
gzip - the swiss army knife utility (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Mars fossil IS made by life; my wife is not (Score:3, Funny)
Not particularly ironic (Score:3, Funny)
Bzip2? Bah , new fangled rubbish! (Score:3, Funny)
and were glad of it and some of the old timers could have been confused with non living processes
even without the help of gzip anyway!
this can also detect PHB's (Score:4, Funny)
feed a business technology proposal through gzip
Gzip doesn't preserve well... (Score:3, Funny)
The problem with gzip is that doesn't preserve data very well. Now tar, it preserves fossil data quite well.
Windows XP is alive! (Score:2, Funny)