RE: Mathematics An Alien Language?
March 16, 2015 at 8:09 am
(This post was last modified: March 16, 2015 at 8:11 am by Alex K.)
(March 16, 2015 at 8:03 am)Little lunch Wrote: If aliens had their own mathematics, wouldn't it be based on how many fingers/tentacles they have?
Ideally, they would use properties which do not depend on the choice of base of your numerical system. Just as an example: the Number 13 in decimal is a prime, as are the number D in hexadecimal, or the number 1101 in binary.
We can discover certain properties of pi which are independent of the base. No matter whether hexadecimal or decimal, pi has an infinitely long representation which does not repeat, for example. If there are features in the number pi which become particularly visible when using base 100 (a message from the centipede race), then we could in principle find them as well.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
