![]() ![]() It was oddly prescient of the Human Genome Project, that mad dash to sequence all 100 000 human permutations of the 4-letter alphabet of life &mdash% ATCG &mdash% by the year 2005 (that is, in 15, not 15 thousand, years). ![]() But, with a Mark V Automatic Sequence Computer, a diesel generator (which the monks already use to power their prayer wheels) and the assistance of two engineers, the task could be completed in a mere 100 days.Ĭlarke published this story in 1953, the year that Watson and Crick modelled the double helix. By some arcane computation of their own, the monks have determined that all such names can be written with an alphabet of 9 letters, that the legitimate permutations of those letters will total 9 billion, and that the task will take 15 thousand years to complete. Clarke describes a Tibetan lama who approaches a computer engineering firm for help with a project that has kept his monastery busy for 300 years: compiling a list of all of the possible names of the Supreme Being. In his story ”The Nine Billion Names of God” Arthur C. ![]()
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