In the Beginning was Information

a degree of integration of 11.72 million Kbits, which is 180 times as muchas the above-mentioned 64 Megabit chip. The density of integration is discussedmore fully in the next section.This comparison makes it patently clear that the evolutionary viewrequires us to believe things which are totally unreasonable. Thousands ofman-years of research as well as unprecedented technological developmentswere required to produce a Megabit chip. But we are expected tobelieve that the storage principles embodied in DNA, with their muchhigher degree of integration, developed spontaneously in matter whichwas left to itself. Such a “theory” is, to say the least, absurd in the highestdegree!A1.2.3 The Highest Packing Density of InformationThe greatest known density of information is that in the DNA of livingcells. The diameter of this chemical storage medium, illustrated in Figure35, is 2 nm = 2 x 10 -9 m, and the spiral increment of the helix is 3.4 nm(Greek hélix = winding, spiral). The volume of this cylinder is V = h x d 2 xπ /4V = 3.4 x 10 -7 cm x (2 x 10 -7 cm) 2 x π/4 = 10.68 x 10 -21 cm 3 per winding.There are 10 chemical letters (nucleotides) in each winding of the doublespiral, giving a statistical information density ofÚ = 10 letters/(10.68 x 10 -21 cm 3 ) = 0.94 x 10 21 letters per cm 3 .If we limit the average information content of 4.32 bits for an amino acid(see Chapter 6) to one letter (nucleotide) of the genetic code, then we findit to be 4.32:3 = 1.44 bits per letter. We can now express the statisticalinformation density of DNA as follows, where 2 bits are taken as theinformation content of one letter (also see Table 3, genetic code, case a):Ú = (0.94 x 10 21 letters/cm 3 ) x (2 bits/letter) = 1.88 x 10 21 bits/cm 3This packing density is so inconceivably great that we need an illustrativecomparison. The photographic slide A in Figure 35 contains the entireBible from Genesis to Revelation on its 33 mm x 32 mm surface, reproducedby means of special microfilm processes [M5]. From the computationgiven in [G11, p 78 – 81], it follows that the DNA molecule entails astorage density 7.7 million million times as great as that of slide A whichcontains the entire Bible. If we want to obtain the DNA packing densityon a photographic slide B, we would have to divide its surface into 2.77192