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GZipping Life Forms: Deflate Reveals Bare-Bones

Posted by Hemos on from the getting-to-the-core-of-the-matter dept.

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."

12 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. I compress.. by mr.+methane · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... therefore I am.

    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. :-)

    1. Re:I compress.. by DShard · · Score: 5, Funny

      That actually should flatter you. You have less entropy so you are of a higher order than the rock. You can brag to all your non-rock friends that those stupid rocks have high entropy.

  2. A-ha! by grub · · Score: 4, Funny


    So when we compress the ultimate, super-duper intelligent life form we get a two byte file containing "42"

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  3. Excellent... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No more sniffing when i'm checking items in the refrigerator - is it 'alive' ? gzip is the answer!

  4. Be Humble by hugesmile · · Score: 4, Funny

    OK, so if I have this right: Life is less random, and more predictible (more compressable)than non-life.

    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....

  5. this might have a few glitches by jj_johny · · Score: 4, Funny
    When I compressed the transcript of the Osbornes, it got increadibily high compression but I don't think they are intelligent life forms. Or maybe I am really wrong.

    This post can't be compressed.

  6. The Mars fossil IS made by life; my wife is not. by Saint+Aardvark · · Score: 5, Funny
    In a true first for extraterrestrial biotic research, I decided to compare two pictures:

    at the comparison page 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.

    --
    Carousel is a lie!
  7. Re:The Mars fossil IS made by life; my wife is not by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  8. I am not by Karpe · · Score: 4, Funny

    I compress to binary 0, therefore I am not.. :(

  9. gzip - the swiss army knife utility by kinnell · · Score: 5, Funny

    I myself have successfully used gzip for factoring large prime numbers, sorting the men from the boys, unblocking the kitchen sink and cracking safes. I'm currently trying to locate Osama Bin Laden by compressing Al Jazeera footage, but all I come up with are reports of Elvis sightings.

    --
    If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
  10. Bzip2? Bah , new fangled rubbish! by Viol8 · · Score: 3, Funny

    What about compress? Or even good old "compact". Ah I remember the days when we had 20% compression
    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!

  11. this can also detect PHB's by IDigUNIX · · Score: 4, Funny
    As alternative to this hypothesis consider:
    feed a business technology proposal through gzip
    • A very high compression ratio indicates that the proposal was likely to be written by consultants. As supported by the fact that they usually re-use the same buzz phrases over and over.
    • A moderate compression ratio indicates that the proposal was written by engineers. Typically they use large words, and unique phrases that are already compressed. I.E. SNMP, J2EE, WWW, and so on.
    • A zero to negative compression ratio indicates that the proposal was likely to be written by a PHB, and hence void of all indications of intelligent life. As evidenced by most PHB's having a hard time using buzz phrases and keywords in context, so they won't recycle enough words to form a good compression dictionary.