Black Goo thoughts (spoilers)

Didn't David touch ome of the goo in Prometheus and squeeze it between his finger tips so it contacted both finger tips, then the camera zoomed in on it and it kind of reflected or glistened like there was some type of electricity in it or tiny, nano particles?  Or maybe that was the residue left on the hologram activator thing.

It was a Thought out Substance by Jon Spaights Drafts...

That became a McGruffin in Prometheus, but not if you took into account Alien Engineers.

And now... well who knows what they are doing, It now has to be a Mutagenic Pathogen that either acts like a form of AI so its a Intelligent Parasitic Pathogenic Mutagen that sets out to Procreate.

Or/And its something that Was Programed/Can be Programed.

Definitely see the Black Goo in Prometheus had something moving inside it when David held it in his fingers, but  David only had the internal substance from within the Ampoule/Vials.

So indeed it could be some-kind of Parasitic Organism, this fits more with the Original Idea in Jon Spaights Alien Engineers where we have Nano Scarabs.

So this Parasite could be Nano-Worm like Organisms?

But AC has tried to answer it, but in doing so has Muddied the Waters a little.

Where was it from?  Who knows... I would say the Original Form is something the Engineers Never Created, but they indeed could have experimented upon it.

If the Source i had from 2.5 years ago is correct, then the idea was the Substance is a Creation Tool, and it accounts for everything Biological.

It was supposed to as far as they claim also be like the Forbidden Fire of Prometheus, and the Fruit from the Tree of Life and Knowledge in the Bible.  Even went further to say that Paradise had a Obelisk growing in front of some Orchard and beyond a like Pathway/Valley of Statues on each side, depicting Engineers and other Humanoid and not so Humanoid beings.

This Black Obelisk was neither Metal or Rock, and it had Roots and so it was growing... and it was the Tree of Forbidden Knowledge from the Bible... a Creation Tool.  At its centre it Glowed Green and this is where the Engineers obtained the Substance from.

LV-223 the Green Crystal is a Shard of this Obelisk Stolen by the Engineers and used against the wishes of their Hierarchy who in their Hubris were Punished for this.

Sadly until Paglen and Greens Work comes out, we cant be sure if this explanation is correct

@BigDave some good thoughts and I hope some aspects make it to the movie. 

I think like you say the nano tech needs maybe the other substance as a catalyst ? as it alters biological/DNA.

I do hope we see beings that are more advanced than the engineers, they dont need to dominate the film maybe appear as cut scene that implies they exist and show that they are creators.

As you say we will have to wait and see. 

Indeed i think it points to the Engineers not being far up the Hiearchy Tree.  The Source i had who had information only based no the Paglen/Green Draft had hinted that Mankind is now the 4th/5th Generation of Mankind and that we do not Evolve from Apes but Engineers DNA plays a key role.  They seem to hint at different versions of Mankind or even that Earlier Mankind pre-existed the Engineers.   And they claimed those LV-223 Engineers well the Prometheus Engineers are more closer to David than us and that Mankind actually have more to do with the Xenomorph than Engineers..  They also claimed that Biblical Events and Punishments by GOD actually happened in context to the Franchise but not to our Generation of Mankind.

As Far as the Goo goes... i always looked at it as a Creation Tool to,  i see it as some kind of Substance that is used to break down and then store DNA of a Organism that consumes the Original Substance and the resulting Broken Down Genetic Material stores the Sacrificial Hosts DNA.

This New Material/Substance then can be used to infect Organisms where it will pass on the best Traits of the Organism that was Sacrificed to make the Black Goo while Evolving the Best Traits of the Organism that comes into contact with this New Substance.

Thus the Black Goo in Prometheus i feel was obtained by using the Sacrificial Goo on some Organism related too if not the Organism that was in the Mural

@BigDave sounds like a good step in the story and hope some of it somehow makes it to the screen. For me I was after a story of origin not just xenemorphs running around killing people. Prometheus for me was a good film or premise to a good film as it touched on things or hinted with the mural etc.

Maybe the xenemorph was an advanced species at one time and the type we have seen created is more of a de-evolved version like man v cave man etc.

There is so much of a story to be told and I wish FOX would allow this but they seem to want to put there own twist to it. 

@S1m0n - "the black goo is some sort of nano AI or possibly is a nano AI which seems to go with what risley is trying to put forward in his franchise."

Let's break down exactly what David said in the Advent video - "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. "

This sounds to me like the writers are finally trying to weave a little bit of biomemchanical flair into the description of the pathogen. However, that does not mean cheesy, tiny little metal nanobots running around inside the hosts building aliens, which seems to be what some people think when they see the word 'nano'.

A 'nanoparticle' is just a small, single particle that behaves as a whole unit. In in this application, it is comparable to a single particle that is part of a collective hive intelligence. In genome editing and gene recombination, nano sized particles can be used with high efficiency to deliver protein packages across cell wall barriers and targeted to specific areas of specific cells that require genome editing. This is simply David being a little more specific than just saying 'the pathogen rewrites the host DNA', which is what he said in the movie.

David calls the black goo 'primordial ooze'. That is a substance made up of organic compounds and amino acids that form protein structures - in other words, it contains the building blocks of life. 

The "A.I." David refers to is tied to the 'evolutionary computing' term he also says. Evolutionary computing is a computer science term that is used in the field of Artificial Intelligence, but in this artificially created biotechnology application (or biomechanical) it means algorithms based on biological evolution are used to predictively organize amino acid sequences and protein structures in an intelligent manner. Again, this is just more detail on how the pathogen is radically rewriting the host DNA for a purpose.

Evolutionary computing algorithms rely on real biologically inspired genetic operations, like selection, mutation, and crossover. Crossover is taking parent chromosomes from more than one parent and producing an offspring combining features of those parent chromosomes. That is exactly what the pathogen does when the parasite takes on characteristics of the host from its DNA, such as the "dog" version of the Alien seen in Alien 3, which walked on all-four legs, instead of upright like the human born version. Or the ultramorph (Deacon) in Prometheus, which had genetic information from Holloway's mutation, Shaw's DNA, and Engineer DNA.

"Entering the host and rewriting the DNA, the pathogen produced mature offspring who's appearance and characteristics are wholly dependent upon the nature of the host itself. The progeny of a parasitized insect for example, will look very different from a creature that issues from a quadruped host. The ultimate aim, as I gather it, was to produce something like these enviable unions. My beautiful bestiary."  - David from the ADF novelization.

@Big Dave

I'm sure this has been covered or mentioned somewhere, but does the other liquid in the ampules/viles look like it could be what programs the goo once it is mixed?  If the goo is nano sized AI, the other liquid could have imbedded "programming" that allows the viles to be used as weapons once mixed.

@drucea I think the other stuff is what @kethol touched on, it will be the building blocks e.g proteins and a few other things.

Until we get more info that is part or the lore we probably wont know.

lets hope we will :) 

The individual particles of  the pathogen would be created 'programmed' for specific genetic tasks. I think the liquid is just a sustainer to store the particles in.

In David's translation of the engineer Weapon Storage manual on the Prometheus Blu Ray it says something like "this will ensure the agents ability to retain infectivity and virulence after prolonged periods of storage".