Humans have always been fascinated with space. We frequently question whether we are alone in the universe. If not, what does intelligent life look like? And how would aliens communicate?
The possibility of extraterrestrial life is grounded in scientific evidence. But the distances involved in travel between the stars are vast. If we do contact aliens, it would likely be via long-distance communication, with our nearest neighboring star being 4.4 light-years away. Even being optimistic, it would likely take more than ten years for any round-trip communication.
How could that work when we have no shared language? Well, consider how we can engage with creatures here on Earth with minds quite alien to our own: bees.
Despite the vast differences between human and bee brains, both can perform mathematics. As we argue in a new paper published in the journal Leonardo, our thought experiment lends weight to the idea that mathematics may form the basis for a “universal language,” which might one day be used to communicate between the stars.
Mathematics as the language of science
The idea of mathematics as universal is not new. Writing in the 17th century, Galileo Galilei described the universe as a grand book “written in the language of mathematics.”
Science fiction, too, has long explored the idea of mathematics as a universal language. In the 1985 novel and 1997 film Contact, extraterrestrials reach out to humans using a repeating sequence of prime numbers sent via a radio signal.
In The Three-Body Problem, a novel by Liu Cixin adapted into a Netflix series, communication between aliens and humans to solve a mathematical problem occurs through a video game.
…
Read the full article on Nspirement
Comments