8th August 2006, 3:52 PM
It might even be reasonable to believe that another form of life similiar in intelligence to our own would not even use light or sound as a source of transmission/communication. They might have a hyper-evolved sense of smell and are able to produce intricate olfactory sensations to transmit thoughts and words. Or they might have huge brains that send out some kind of brainwaves that we can't even begin to imagine or measure. In either cases, a radio signal might be just a complete waste of time.
Even if they could recieve such transmissions, we also have to assume that they have the same kind of comprehension of mathematics and counting as we do. What we percieve as the ultimate truth of math might well be only one way of doing things and another intelligent race, based on how they develop may well find some other form of such fields that is entirely unknown and incomprehensible to us.
That's also assuming that they even use math and numbers in the same way that we do. Their ideas regarding such fields may have developed in ways that we can't begin to understand because to us math is one thing and one thing only and that's the way it's always been, but suppose there's some OTHER way of using math that we never found because we never looked for it or maybe because we don't even know HOW to look for it.
Again, we can't just assume that any alien race we come across will have developed in such a way to allow us to communicate with them simply because we know absolutely nothing about them.
Even if they could recieve such transmissions, we also have to assume that they have the same kind of comprehension of mathematics and counting as we do. What we percieve as the ultimate truth of math might well be only one way of doing things and another intelligent race, based on how they develop may well find some other form of such fields that is entirely unknown and incomprehensible to us.
That's also assuming that they even use math and numbers in the same way that we do. Their ideas regarding such fields may have developed in ways that we can't begin to understand because to us math is one thing and one thing only and that's the way it's always been, but suppose there's some OTHER way of using math that we never found because we never looked for it or maybe because we don't even know HOW to look for it.
Again, we can't just assume that any alien race we come across will have developed in such a way to allow us to communicate with them simply because we know absolutely nothing about them.
Sometimes you get the scorpion.