Who Wrote the Book of Life?

While Thompson and other biomathematicians used almost exclusively linear and quadratic distortions to study how life forms change over time, it is unlikely that complex life forms throughout the universe will be confined to these narrow statistical relationships. Accordingly, D'Arcy Thompsons work is being extended through the use of computers.

When D'Arcy Thompson introduced the idea of studying organisms by their geometric shapes, he could only draw figures by hand. The computers of today can take Thompson's research much further. By repeatedly comparing and contrasting learnable imagery, a D'Arcy machine would expand the chapters of the Book of Life Project and give us an interplanetary version of D'Arcy Thompson's classic "On Growth and Form."

Computers with artificial intelligence using neural networks provide more opportunities to answer complex astrobiology imaging questions. The non-linear evolution of artificial intelligence is customised to handle the learning of multiple patterns or images. Computers with artificial intelligence could accommodate various influencing variables (such as gravity) that change over scales much larger than a linear variance can include. Changes in the effects of gravity on a body can occur, for instance, when humans go into outer space. Astronauts often experience fluid retention, excessive bone loss and muscle wasting due to the effects of microgravity.

The neural network at Marshall Space Centre will be able to rapidly process the complex computations necessary for mathematically analysing the shapes of life (morphometrics). If someone continuously used a hand calculator to tabulate just linear connections, at a rate of one calculation per second it would take forty years to finish a billion calculations. The computer system speeds up this process dramatically, processing over a billion connections per second.

Writing the Interplanetary Book of Life
The powerful capabilities of a D'Arcy classification machine could also be used to study and catalogue images from the 14 known Martian meteorites. The total mass to be scanned exceeds 20 kilograms (44 lbs.), so if micron scale images are included in future projects (1 micron is 1-millionth of a metre, or 1/25,000 of an inch) the combined image handling capabilities for biogenic classification will exceed several trillion frames.