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Re: How do you say 'Hello' to an alien?

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Saturday, August 2, 2003, 16:35
Quoting Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote: > > I think the compositors of the Arecibo message assumed any repicients would > be > > familiar with binary notation, and therefore likely to recognize it. I > shan't > > try to guess the odds of an alien civilization as a whole being acquainted > to > > binary numbers, but merely pessimistically note that positional notation > seems > > to come anything but naturally to many humans I know. > > Surely any alien life form with computer technology would be familiar > with binary notation, even if it's only an historical curiosity, because > their computers have long since advanced beyond binary.
I wouldn't be sure of that, and there's no guarantee that an alien who receives the message has computer technology.
> But, why does it matter if they know what the message means? Isn't it > enough that it's artificial?
Had those who composed the thing thought like that, I expect they'd not crammed that many more or less interesting factoids into it. But as John said, it's primarily symbolic. Andreas

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michael poxon <m.poxon@...>