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Super Bowl Footballs Get The DNA Touch
theodp writes "All 120 Super Bowl XL footballs will be marked with a drop of synthetic DNA to thwart potential counterfeiters (free reg. required to read) who might be tempted to sell phony game-used Super Bowl footballs, which can be worth thousands of dollars. Exposed to a specific laser frequency, the DNA glows to a bright green. 'The chance of replicating this exact DNA sequence is one in 33 trillion,' said the president of PSA/DNA Authentication Services."
33 trillion to 1? Yeah right. All a counterfeiter needs do is make it glow roughly the same green. No need to actually replicate the DNA sequence: no-one will actually check that anyway!
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Eww... doesn't anyone wash their hands anymore?
From the horse's mouth:
NFL Again Uses PSA/DNA to Prevent Super Bowl Footballs Fraud
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who cares about the probability of replicating the exact sequence? What is the probability that an arbitrary sequence DNA will glow under that light?
Well you figure 2 teams, 30 players each. Yeah it comes out to 120. No wait, you need a football, so 121.
The chance of replicating this exact DNA sequence is one in 33 trillion
Never tell me the odds!
IANA molecular biologist, but isn't there a pretty common process for taking trace DNA, then duplicating it en masse for crime scene investigation?
..don't panic
1) Purchase legitimate game ball for 'thousands' 2) Extract DNA sequence and replicate using PCR or actually sequence it and then create more 3) ...
4) Profit !
1) Slaughter a pig.
2) Slice the hide into 120 footballs.
3) Serve the leftovers as bacon during the pre-game tailgate.
All the footballs have the same DNA.
The glow is related to the discount the company received by purchasing from Chernobyl pig farmers.
What the hell is stopping a counterfitting group from sequencing the DNA and replicating it?
I mean, they're willing to go the distance to make the balls looks authentic, it can be done.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
There are probably nuggets of truth in the claim, but first of all DNA does not glow green. Perhaps they used fancy synthetic nucleotide analogs with a fluorescent label? Otherwise, they just spiked cheap marker dye into the mix, separate from the DNA. Furthermore, though a laser of the proper frequency (color) can definately make a fluorescent dye glow green, this is hardly something only a laser can do. Any source of (probably blue-ish) light will do. But of course 'blue flashlight' sounds not nearly as cool as 'laser of a specific frequency'.
The U.S. has a huge trade deficit. Why aren't we exporting this junk?
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
"The chance of replicating this exact DNA sequence is one in 33 trillion, so it's virtually impossible."
I'm not saying that the chances of replicating the exact sequence are good, but you figure people involved in sport would know better than to assign odds that long.
Working from known sequences that fluoresce under laser stimulation, I bet they could narrow the odds down, to say, oh, a billion to one. Not that it matters, since what they'll be testing is not the base sequence, but instead whether laser + pig bladder = fluorescence.
So beating their test just means guessing the frequency of the laser.
I'll bet $100 on 100,000 different reproducable frequencies ($10M in bets) and I figure one of them will hit... even if they take a 5% vig, I'm still making out with 3.135 QUADRILLION dollars.
Take that, Dr. Evil.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
1 in 33 trillion is still only a finite improbability, and now that I know the figures, I just need a cup of really hot tea and I'll have myself a goldmine of counterfeit footballs...
I didn't mean to imply the technology was useless. It may very well have good applications. Putting synthetic DNA on a football is not a good application. I was actually ready to burn some karma on that comment as I'm very against sports where a guy gets paid millions to toss a ball or anything along those lines. Priorities are absolutely terrible in 1st world countries. I mean I know leisure activities are important but I don't think they're as important as we make them out to be. I would much rather go play a game of football than watch one.
I'd like to note that if a certain technology is needed it will be developed, manufactured need or not.
I agree with you that sports are valued too much, but you're pretty silly to assert that the United States had anything much to do with this ridiculous invention. It was a private company looking to take advantage of peoples' rapacious, irrational interest in "authenticity".
If the Franklin Mint can create authenticity, it must not be that valuable.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"Is it guaranteed that each multi-thousand $$$ football is even used in the game once? "
No. But the unused balls aren't sold as Superbowl-used balls.
"Does the average game even have 120 plays"
Nope. Roughly 60 plays + special plays (kickoffs, punts, etc). Likely fewer in this game, since both teams have potent running games.
do they really switch them every single play?
For the first half. Then they use only(!) 12 balls for the 2nd half. It's in the article.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
This has translated into practical, useful things such as Gatorade. . .
Otherwise known as "Florescent Sugar Water."
With a pinch of salt.
Took nearly minutes of research to whip that up.
KFG
And the chances of a potential purchaser having the specific laser to verify their purchase? About one in 35 trillion...
Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet
Am I missing something here? Why not just make the pig skins from green pigs in the first place. Try replicating that in your backyard.
It just occurred to me: There are only 4 nucleotide bases in DNA, so they give the ballpark figure of how long the strand of DNA is. That was awful helpful of them. They just pulled back on the trigger of their 9mm and shot themselves in the foot. And I bet someone on the inside just sells the "recipe" to the highest bidder.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
If someone's stupid enough to pay thousands of dollars to buy a football just because it was supposedly used in a Superbowl game, then they deserve it if they get conned.
Similarly, I don't get all these auctions where an article of clothing sells for huge sums of money simply because a celebrity wore it once. Why's it suddenly worth so much more than getting the exact same thing from a store?
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
I agree with your sentiment about organized sports, therefore, I almost hate to bring about this little counterpoint of logic.
Your argument against the amount paid to a top sports player is basically a Short Term/Long Term fallacy, a subset of "Excluded Middle".
The reason a guy gets paid millions to toss a ball, or something similar is because millions of fans watch. They pay for viewing, they watch ads, hell, they have tailgate parties prior to games, and you can bet they buy a good deal of merchandise for those parties alone. Organized sports is big business, and having popular players (those who can throw the ball well) brings in added revenue for the teams that can win. Just take a look at the prices of the footballs in the article!
It boils down to money. The team owners/franchises want to make more money, the fans want to see more/better games, and are happy to spend their money to do so.
Ironically, when I was in Africa in 1990 building a medical clinic, all the locals loved playing soccer, and whenever a newspaper was around, everyone gawked over the world soccer scores. It was near religion to them. They also had a better knowledge of North American boxing than I ever have had. And yet, many of these people owned only one set of clothes, and most did not have electricity, and certanly not any clean water.
And so, these very people I was trying to help were caught up in organized sports, where, as you say the funds from the massive North American endevours could be used to help the people in Africa. You are right of course, but it seems that people everywhere, on the average are sports nuts. This does not make people bad, it just makes them human.
We, the slashdot geeks are a different breed.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Your intuition is right on. It must be about a 22-23 nucleotide oligomer. 4^22 = 18 trillion or so. Like someone else said, DNA doesn't glow green, so they either used tagged nucleotides or just spiked their DNA-containing ink with a green fluorescent dye. The dye, I suspect, is just so they know where they put the DNA without having to actually discolor the ball.
You'd be amazed if you knew what their profit margin must be. Oligos like that cost about 10 bucks for enough to probably detectably tag all 120 footballs, and you can synthesize any sequence you want. A couple of bucks for that fluoresence dye, some ink, and I bet it costs them about a quarter a ball altogether. You could even do this sort of thing yourself for not much more. Most DNA synthesis companies will happily do business with private citizens. The only substantial cost would be verifiying an object that someone brings in, but even that just requires a half-decent molecular biology tech and some not-too-expensive equipment. You don't need to actually sequence the thing to verify that it matches a reference sample - you can just cheaply and quickly test binding affinity. I'll bet they charge for verification, anyway. So this whole scheme is probably the next-best thing to printing money.
(IAAMB - molecular biologist)
So you're saying I have a chance.
I'll bet that the odds are less than 33 trillion to one that you could bribe someone who works for the synthetic DNA company to pilfer a sample for you.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
So one could steal the combination and replicate it in a snap. And the combintion itslef could be a simple file stored in an unsecure system.
It'd be better to educate people about the real value of a used dirty football ball!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Why not just sequence the DNA of the leather? Pigs have DNA too.