Letter: Are we really just alien biocomputers?

From Gary Golding,Brisbane, Australia

The article on the power of biological computers as self-replicating, low-energy systems, capable of computation and problem solving, brought to mind von Neumann probes (10 June, p 36).

These are theoretically devised by an extraterrestrial civilisation to colonise the universe with self-replicating machines, usually thought of as being mechanical, not biological, and the most likely sign of advanced aliens.

However, the Fermi paradox raises the question of why, if this is so, we haven’t found any such probes. This paradox may now have been solved. What better way to colonise the universe than by seeding planets with biological machines. Perhaps we are the von Neumann probes.