Because of what did I say just above, one one could think that if we intercepted some day some hypothtic extraterrestrial message , it would be definitively impossible to interpret it. This question is not an uterly speculative one, some astronomers from all around the world search in stars radio waves some possible message. Their field is called SETI, (search of extra terrestrial intelligence). They consider, on the other hand, the project of sending some day such messages, au petit bonheur, even if, today, known technology doesn't provide any powerful enough d'émetteur. In fact, to understand such messages, or to write them in order that they could be understood, is, in theory,rather easy. The knack is to begin with sending something expectable and easy to understand.Like the series of the first integers, one, two, three... then, for instance, some additions with their résults etc. Many things may be described by numbers. Elementsby their radiation frequency etc. This unexpected ease is due to the the fact that the author knew that his reader wouldn't speak his language and took it into account. This ease is, even though, mostly theorically. Once, one of those specialists amused himself by write a little message ultra simple and "devoted to be understood by anybody " then he submited it to his colleaguesthinking they would translate it in five minuts.None of them did understand anything. Yet they were, like him, some creature made of carbon and nucleic acids, better than this some human being, better some citizens of his own country, living at his time and having studied in the same schools than him. Is it so sure that some extraterrestrial would have done better? | |