Here's How We Could Begin Decoding an Alien Message Using Math

Slashdot reader silverjacket writes:Researchers at Oxford and elsewhere developed a method that figures out the most likely number and size of dimension in which to format a string of bits, with applications to interpreting messages from extraterrestrial intelligence (METI), if we were to receive them. The new method "looks at every possible combination of dimension number and size," according to Science News:The researchers also measure each possible configuration's global order by seeing how much an image compression algorithm can shrink it without losing information - mathematically, randomness is less compressible than regular patterns... Hector Zeni [one of the creators of this method] "notes that in Carl Sagana(TM)s sci-fi novel Contact, the characters spend a lot of time figuring out that a message received from aliens is in three dimensions (specifically a video). aoeIf you have our tools, you would solve that problem in seconds and with no human intervention.aAn algorithm that pieces together smaller algorithmic components in order to explain or predict data - this new method is just one way to do it - may also help us one day achieve artificial general intelligence, Zenil says. Such automated approaches don't depend on human assumptions about the signal. That opens the door to discovering forms of intelligence that might think differently from our own.

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