From: Terry Groff <terry.nul>
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:46:33 -0600
Archived: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:36:53 -0500
Subject: Re: Mathematics The Only True Universal Language


>Source: New Scientist Magazine - Sutton Surrey, England, UK

>http://tinyurl.com/delyah

>16 February 2009

>Magazine issue 2695

>Mathematics: The Only True Universal Language
>by Martin Rees

>If we ever establish contact with intelligent aliens living on a
>planet around a distant star, we would expect some problems
>communicating with them. As we are many light years away, our
>signals would take many years to reach them, so there would be no
>scope for snappy repartee. There could be an IQ gap and the
>aliens might be built from quite different chemistry.

>Yet there would be much common ground too. They would be made of
>similar atoms to us. They could trace their origins back to the
>big bang 13.7 billion years ago, and they would share with us the
>universe's future. However, the surest common culture would be
>mathematics.


This makes me wonder what kind of number system might be used
elsewhere. Decimal? Binary? Octal? Duodecimal? We use decimal
basically because that's the number of digits on our hands. Then
we use binary because our computers only understand 1 or 0.

There are cultures here on Earth that don't have a number for
anything greater than three. If it's four or more than it just
becomes "many".

Of course we wouldn't expect this from a technologically
advanced civilization but one never knows.


Terry Groff



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