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Instead of using units of measurement, scientists resort to various comparisons to emphasize the vast amount of genetic data in human beings. Here are some examples that stress the breadth of the data capacity in DNA:
*** If the information in the human genome could be written down using the alphabet, it would fill 1,000 books of 1,000 pages each, each page containing 3,000 letters.56
1,000 books times 1,000 pages times 3,000 letters equals 3,000,000,000 (3 billion) letters.
*** If those 3 billion letters in the human genome were written out as a single sentence, it would stretch from the North Pole to the Equator. Someone working at a typewriter at a rate of 300 letters per minute for 8 hours a day, 220 days a year, would take 95 years to complete the task.57
*** For the genetic information to be written out would require 12,000 160-page books. Compared with computer chips with a 16 MB capacity (a megabyte is 1 million bytes, the smallest data units in a computer), the DNA strip in the human genome contains 1,400 times more information.58
*** If a pinhead 2 millimeters (0.078 of an inch) in diameter were stretched out to the thinness of the DNA molecule, it would be 33 times longer than the Equator.59
*** The information in DNA is sufficient to fill a library consisting of 100 sets of a 30-volume encyclopedia.60
*** Were the information in DNA to be placed in books piled one on top of the other, those books would attain a height of 70 meters (229 feet). Alternatively, that information could fill 200 phone books of 500 pages each.61
*** If the DNA in all the cells in the human body were flattened out and laid end to end, they would stretch for some 50,000,000 kilometers (31,070,000 miles.) That distance is enough to go from the Earth to the Solar System. Light would take approximately two days to travel the entire length of the DNA in your body.62
*** According to professor Jérôme Lejeune, a genetics expert, the genetic data belonging to all the human beings on Earth could be contained in a quantity of DNA no larger than a few aspirin tablets.63
***The information in the DNA in a single human cell could fill 1 million encyclopedia pages. Individuals could not live long enough to read their own genetic data. Where they to read the DNA code every day, 24 hours a day, non-stop, it would take 100 years to complete the task.
*** To envisage the density of the data in the DNA molecule, assume that you have enough DNA to cover a pinhead. Now consider that this same information is written down in books of 160 pages each. The data in such a small amount of DNA could fill 15 trillion (15 times 1012) of those 160-page books. If you placed that many books one on top of the other, their height would be 500 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon (384,000 kilometers, or 238,600 miles). Alternatively, if these books were equally distributed among the 6 billion or so people in the world, every individual would receive 2,500 volumes.64
The boundless information that these examples try to express is stored inside every cell nucleus. The presence of DNA, storing the equivalent amount of information to a large library, in some 100 trillion cells, means 100 trillion of these libraries. Were we to compare that level of information with the level so far achieved by mankind, we would be unable to find an example sufficiently large. In addition, if we multiplied that quantity by the 6 billion people currently living on the Earth and the billions of others who lived in the past, a boundless quantity of data would appear before us. Moreover, we are now speaking only of human genetic information. Bearing in mind the genetic information possessed by the millions of living creatures that have ever existed, the level rises to heights that exceed comprehension. The knowledge that our Omniscient and Almighty Lord has manifested in DNA leaves absolutely no room for claims based on chance. In one verse, it is stated that:
Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood and it cuts right through it and it vanishes clean away! Woe without end for you for what you portray! (Surat al-Anbiya, 18)
References
- Werner Gitt, The Wonder of Man, p. 75. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Carl Wieland, "The Marvellous 'Message Molecule'", Creation, September 1995, Vol 17, no. 4, pp. 10-13. ↩
- http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/news/13800.asp ↩
- Lee Spetner, Not By Chance, Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution, p. 30. ↩
- Carl Wieland, "The Marvellous 'Message Molecule'", Creation, [Jérôme Lejeune, Anthropotes (Revista di studi sulfa persona e la famiglia), Istituto Giovanni Paolo 11, Rome, 1989, pp. 269-270.] ↩
- Werner Gitt, The Wonder of Man, p 75. ↩