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

Staving Andreas Johansson:

>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.

Anyone with sufficient technical expertise to build and operate a radio
telescope capable of receiving the signal can be assumed to be familiar
with binary. At least, that's what seems reasonable to an astronomer who
does engineering research for a broadcasting organisation.

Pete