David's Lab (Blu-Ray Teaser): David explains what the black goo is.

"I think its more a supernatural substance, david being N android has tried to classify it scientifically"

I don't think there is anything supernatural about the pathogen at all. The terms David uses in Advent are all typical stuff in genetics and biology.

"This primordial ooze, ripe with advanced nano particles, operating off on an algorithm based on evolutionary computing. It is essentially a form of radical A.I., making the substance unbelievably chaotic. It generates a unique reaction to every genome it encounters. Reshaping life."  - David

'Primordial ooze' is just the building blocks of life - organic compounds and amino acids that form protein structures. That term has been around since the 1950s when scientist tried to re-create the original primordial material that they think life originated from on Earth. It is also called promordial sludge, primordial soup, and... primordial GOO.

A 'nanoparticle' is just a small, nano-sized, single particle of carbon and phosphate that behaves as a whole unit. These are organic particles, not little metal robots. In genome editing and gene recombination, we use nanoparticles like siRNA, miRNA, and ribozymes, and  riboswitches to deliver protein packages across cell wall barriers and targeted to specific areas of specific cells that require genome editing. They are basically used to rewrite DNA, which is what David said the pathogen does to the host in Covenant. He is just being more specific in Advent by saying 'advanced nano particles that generate a unique reaction to every genome'.

When David says "A.I." and 'evolutionary computing' he is talking about the same type of thing. Evolutionary computing is a computer science term that is used in the field of Artificial Intelligence. It means it uses algorithms based on biological evolution to predictively organize amino acid sequences and protein structures in DNA in an intelligent manner to rewrite it. The pathogen version of this can also intelligently adapt to resistance to these algorithms, and since it was created artificially for the Engineer's biomechanical biotechnology application, it is technically 'artificial' and 'intelligent'. That may not be the 'self aware' type of A.I. that most people think of when they hear that term, but there is still an organized intelligence to what it does, like a hive intelligence.

Those algorithms used in evolutionary computing come from real biological genetic operations, like mutation and crossover. Crossover takes chromosomes from more than one parent organism and produces a chromosome that combines features of those parents. That is exactly what the parasitic form of the pathogen does and how David bred his own version.

I just watched the Herrozzy (sp?) video comparing all of the A:C scenes to the Divine Comedy artwork.  The end of this video shows the bombing scene which I guess I didn't really pay close attention to before.  But however the method of ingestion or infection from the black goo cloud, as the camera skims around through the dieing bodies, the heads move and explode just like the Engineers head on LV-223 they bring back to the ship.  Their skin on the heads starts to crack and bubble then explode, some spew from the mouth, most of the black goo that spews from the mouths or openings seems to harden instantly as it grows into a grotesque shape.

joylitt

When I watched Advent and picked up the deconstruction of the Alien Pathogen I to made the connection with Transcendence.

There was a point in the evolution of the script when I looked at both Paglen and Green's recent work and then considered Ridleys remark about David infecting the machine which evolved into bringing hell.

I think what we are picking up in the detail being offered is little fragments of the big ideas that would have driven the movie pre John Logan and Alien Prefix. 

The transformative journey of Shaw the creation of multiple Davids and a much closer and more detailed look at the Engineers and the source of their power which David would have tampered with. This notion of the Pathogen being radical A I may echo how David was going to affect the machine, the source of the Engineers power. If you have considered any of Big Dave' tips down they years from his source they hint at all these elements.

David was going to use what he learned from the Xeno strain, as Damon called it, on the Engineers but in a much more subtle way than what we received, the bombing contracting the Engineers element down (and Shaw) and made space and fed into David and his Xeno creation arc. 

There is a connection to Transcendence? Please don't tell me we are going to find out the aliens are created by little nanobots :(

What is Alien Prefix?

Great theories and explanations BigDave

I wasn't thinking of A.I. when David revealed this, but instead immediately thought of the famous Lycurgus cup from ancient Rome and Mesopotamia.

These humanoids aren't looks Like Engineers but like humans beings. Females has Black Hood on head and all of them hasn't so white, shining skin like Engineers. They can be humans took from earth long ago to paradise and they live in this times. Maby Black goo when feel noise and agitation when David dumps pathogen from vessel, its changing to agressive pathogen and destroy all of life but when is calm goo live like normal microorganism, and search host to life and  asimilates to xenomorphs. Xenomorphs hate noise. In spiderman, venom hate noise and can be furious. 

I have missed some Replies on here, i think i will PASS on replying to them (as the comments i would like to reply to are by Posters who MAY-NOT be back to respond).

So i will reply to you Michart

First Welcome aboard ;)

Those Engineers do look more like a Hybrid of Human and Engineers, you could be Mistaken to think they had taken Humans to Interbreed with, that Certainly would FIT.  As would if the Engineers could not PROCREATE and so our Creation/Evolution was to allow them to be able to Procreate again (if they Ran out of Females).

What it could be is that the Prometheus Engineers are to those Planet 4 Engineers as the Replicants in Blade Runner are to Humans ;)

Regarding the Black Goo... well with the Revelation its a Form of Radical A.I it becomes a McGuffin that can be MOLDED to do what ever they see FIT for a Plot Convenience.

It could be the Ship did something to those URNS that would Cause a Different Reaction to the Pathogen... Think of this like the Arming and Activation of a Atomic Bomb!

Where as the Fallen/Leaked Urns on the Crashed Ship, and those in Prometheus are like a Nuclear Weapon in Storage that Suffers a Radioactive Leak!