Yvan Dutil wrote:
> I recently been involve in the conception of a message to be send to
> extra-terrestrial on May 1 this year. ...
>
> By the way, we use prime. On the first page we have a list of prime
> and we include the bigest we know: 2^3021377-1.
This reinforces an earlier notion I posted: that primes are the most
obvious thing to put in a messages bound for exocivilizations. In
retrospect, it is difficult to imagine such a message without reference
to prime numbers and/or mathematics as we know it.
Consider this: *any* civilization that is capable of receiving our
messages must have developed knowledge of math functions, and
knowledge of division implies knowledge of primes.
Without knowledge of math, humans could not have built anything
significantly more impressive than that which other animals
can build, such as bird nests, honeycombs, termite mounds, etc.
But humans, being the only earthly species to have discovered
mathematics, are also the only species that can send signals
from the home planet, and are the only species in position to
receive same from outside.
All this reinforces the notion that we GIMPSers are working
on something that *really matters* on the planetary scale,
as well as the cosmic. spike
________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
