JUST PUBLISHED: Oxford Professor Breaks Down Pluribus — and His Verdict on the Alien RNA Is Brutal

In Apple TV’s new blockbuster series Pluribus, astronomers detect a signal from outer space. They realise it is genetic code, written in ribonucleic acid (RNA), which they produce and inject into a range of animals to see what happens. The answer, without risking a spoiler, is not a lot. Until, that is, a clumsy scientist eventually gets bitten by one of these animals and quickly starts behaving oddly. Her strange carryings-on help spread her peculiar behaviour until everyone on Earth, bar about a dozen people, succumbs to symptoms the original RNA sequence somehow produces. These symptoms are veganism, an annoying degree of happiness, a desire to help those who are unaffected, and a hive mind with the affected able to communicate with everyone else on Earth via some form of instant telepathy.

Pluribus is not the first science-fiction story where scientists detect some sort of signal from space and act upon it. Films in this well-trodden genre range from the excellent Contact, where scientists receive instructions to build what turns out to be a teleport machine, to Species, where they receive a genetic sequence and instructions on how to splice it into human DNA. They blindly follow these instructions, producing a beautiful human-alien hybrid, played by Natasha Henstridge, who spends much of the film scantily clad or naked looking for men to mate with. It is as bad as it sounds, and it is no great surprise that later movies in the franchise were released straight to video.

In contrast, Pluribus is highly watchable, but is it even vaguely realistic? What would we do if we received a signal from space, and what signals might we send?

Humanity has never received a signal from outer space containing a genetic sequence. The only peculiar signal detected from deep space is known as the “Wow!” signal, which was detected on 15 August 1977. It was a very brief radio signal and has never been heard again. Some astronomers have hypothesised it was produced by an extraterrestrial civilisation, and although we cannot definitively rule that out as the source, most scientists today suspect it was generated by a natural astrophysical process we do not currently entirely understand.

If we received a genetic sequence, we could express it in cells. Scientists have produced RNA sequences that they have injected into very large numbers of people. Some of the most effective COVID vaccines were the first to use this remarkable technology. The RNA is helped into cells by other compounds in the vaccine, where it is read by cellular machinery to make a harmless protein found on the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Our immune system learns to attack and neutralise this harmless protein, in turn providing protection against the virus if an infection later occurs.

RNA is a versatile chemical that life heavily relies upon. It plays critical roles in producing proteins, molecules that are the workhorses of life. These proteins control the way our bodies are constructed and function. But they do have to obey the rules of physics. A protein could not produce a hive mind, because there is no physical way in which all humans could telepathically communicate with one another. The fact they would then all subscribe to a liberal philosophy of a plant-based diet and a desire to help one’s neighbour is even more implausible. If it were possible for a single protein to do this, some left-leaning billionaire would surely have already arranged for us all to be injected with such a protein. That has not happened, despite the claims of some conspiracy theorists.

What signal should we send into space? Should we broadcast some of our DNA? Given we do not know whether alien life forms are DNA-based, and if they are whether they use the same genetic code, there seems to be little to be gained from doing that. However, from a biological perspective, any gene inserted into life on another planet that goes on to spread has won the evolutionary lottery. So perhaps the film Species is slightly less implausible than Pluribus, even if the rates of development of the human-alien hybrid are impossible.

Maybe we should broadcast instructions to build a machine. Perhaps the CERN particle collider, or a SpaceX rocket, or a wine-vending machine. The last idea is clearly ridiculous, but we have been sending ridiculous content into space for some time. Radio waves leaving Earth travel at the speed of light into the cosmos. Whether the wave carries a radio or TV transmission, we have been inadvertently signalling our existence to the rest of the universe for well over a century. An alien civilisation might currently be trying to interpret a snippet of The Archers, working out what we are trying to tell them. If that is happening, any response we receive might be no more than instructions for a better way to milk a species of cosmic cow.

It also seems likely that the first signals we would detect will be very faint snippets of some mindless alien soap opera. We might try to interpret a Mills-and-Boon-style romance between little green men and women as being deep extraterrestrial philosophy. Or perhaps we will pick up part of an alien sci-fi adventure where an extraterrestrial signal is received, acted upon and creates a liberal hive mind. The story would be no less ridiculous than that of Earth-produced science fiction. Maybe I will write a screenplay.