How do codons and calends combine?
Supercoiling
Supercoiling is a means for long strands (typically referring to DNA, as in the video below) to coil into dense packages, as opposed to remaining as one long linear ribbon (see also ribbon theory & knot theory).
Imagine that each day were a pearl on a long string. 365 pearls would be a year-long necklace, if you follow me. Now picture coiling up those 365 pearls into 28-pearl coils. And then each of those into 7-pearl coils. You’d have 7 coils within 4 coils within 13 coils.
In a sense, this pattern of coiling is similar to the path described by planetary and lunar orbits – the moon orbits the earth (kind of), the earth orbits the sun, the sun orbits Sag A* (the black hole at the centre of the milky way). You could picture the path of the moon’s orbit as a coiling around the earth as it coils around the Sun as it coils around the milky way. Just trying to find a visual means of representing time through supercoiling (and if I knew how to animate it online, I would do so, but I don’t, so I haven’t).
This is a means of visualizing self-similar aspects of time, as described in yesterday’s post.
For the moment, let’s just consider the relationship between DNA and time:
This was taken from the law of time site, and I can’t find the original. Apologies.
In the mandala above, the artist has linked the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching to the 64 codons of RNA – the codons are defined by 3 consecutive base pairs (the building block molecules of our genetic material). There are 4 bases (Adenine, Guanine, Cystosine and Uracil) which are abbreviated A, G, C, U respectively. A codon can be any 3 of these AAA, AAG, AAC, etc… through to UUU. This gives us a total of 64 different codons. Each codon specifies a particular amino acid (or stop/start signal) that is added in the protein synthesis stage.
This ties DNA to the I Ching which in turn is connected to the reckoning of time (not to mention DNA computing). Considering our genetic material is what allows us to reproduce as a species, it is inherently tied to time in terms of successive generations (which I arbitrarily assign at 20 years). At any rate, there is more to be explored here, but for the time being, let’s just leave it at these superficial similarities.
Let us also not forget Dr David Deamer (et al) and their work using proteins & DNA sequences to create music based on molecular structure.
Knotworks
While we’re talking about superstrings, supercoils and other super things, why not knots? The Inca, who had a time system build into their landscape, also used a system of knotted strings to communicate, called the Quipu.
It’s an elaborate system, but nevertheless speaks of human ingenuity when it comes to communication. Oh, what a tangled web we weave and so on. This is reminiscent (to me anyway) of the wampum used by the Natives of the Eastern Woodlands of North America, which uses beads made of channeled whelk and quahog shells as opposed to knots to communicate.
These are both ingenious methods of weaving meaning into art. Which might well serve us when designing a meaningful system of time-reckoning.
Related articles
- How long is a strand of DNA? (greenanswers.com)
- Deciphering The Genetic Code (geneticnirvana.wordpress.com)
- A revolution in knot theory (eurekalert.org)
- Resolution for 2012: Find rhythm in life (chicagourbanite.wordpress.com)
