Calling All Martians

How do earthlings go about striking up a conversation with the inhabitants of other planets? The British Interplanetary Society, which considers such questions with scientific solemnity, heard a lecture last week by Lancelot Hogben, F.R.S., author of 1936's bestselling book Mathematics for the Million.*

Assume, said Hogben, that the earth's "E.T.N." (Extraterrestrial Neighbors) can perceive or record radiation in some part of the electromagnetic spectrum (light, heat, radio waves, etc.) Also assume that the earth can send such radiation strongly enough to reach the nearest planets. After all, radio waves are being beamed to the moon as a matter of routine, and their feeble reflections, bounced back to earth, are heard easily.

First Words. But what can earthlings say that their Extraterrestrial Neighbors will understand? Let's begin, said Hogben, by some small talk about numbers, whose properties do not vary from planet to planet. Most numerical systems (the Roman, Chinese, Mayan) grew out of simple tally marks. One mark stood for "one"; two marks for "two," etc. Probably the Neighbors passed through a similar stage in their early intellectual development and have records of it. So Hogben's first message into space would be an equation in simplified Roman numerals:

"I plus II plus HI equals IIIIII." The numbers are "dashes" (single strokes repeated), and the plus signs and equals sign are "flashes." By flashes Hogben means easily recognized groups of radio signals, rather like the letters of the Morse code.

When the Neighbors have heard this equation, repeated often enough, they ought to understand its meaning. By taking it apart, they can learn the first few words of the interplanetary language. More complicated equations will teach them more words. Some will be "operators" (plus, minus, times), which are very like verbs.

In building up the numbers, Hogben pointed out, earthlings won't necessarily use the decimal system, which originated from the fact that humans have ten fingers. They cannot assume that the Neighbors have ten fingers--or any fingers at all, for that matter. But some "rank system" is needed, so he suggests basing earth's numbers not on ten but twelve, which is handier mathematically, anyhow.

Hogben gives much attention to the question of a question mark. If the Neighbors can be induced to respond and take active part in the discussion, the teaching process should be easier. The morale of the teachers should improve, too, as soon as they are convinced that their class is attentive.

Interplanetary News. Teaching the Neighbors a system of numerals Hogben calls his "fresher" (freshman) course. For his sophomore course he casts about for some other topic that earthlings have in common with their Neighbors. The best one, he thinks, is astronomy. The "Venetians" (inhabitants of Venus), who supposedly live at the bottom of an opaque atmosphere, may know nothing about the sky, but the Martians should. Their atmosphere is clearer than the earth's.

To start his sophomore course, Hogben goes back again to the early days of human intellectual development. The first body of scientific knowledge that most cultures accumulated was data on the calendar (the apparent motion of the sun) and on the motion of the planets. So human astronomers should first work out the dates of such events as they are experienced on Mars. Sent across space in the language of numbers as "interplanetary news items," they should be easily recognized by the Martians.

As the interplanetary language develops, whole new topics of conversation will gradually open up. The subject of chemistry can be broached through the numerical properties of the spectra of stars. When the language can cope with anatomy, earthlings will learn what the Neighbors look like. At last, when interplanetary chatter becomes commonplace, individual humans should be able to make friends with individual Martians. They can compare their rhythms of life and death. They can even compare their respective intelligence by playing "celestial chess" across the emptiness of space.

*Hogben is also famous in England as an extreme example of the peculiar professor, who forgets his own birthday and talks indistinctly, with his eyes shut tight. This sort of thing has attracted the attention of the bobbies. During a recent trial, when Hogben was acquitted of drunken driving, a friendly colleague testified: "There is no other man I know more likely to be mistaken for a drunken man when he is quite sober."

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