Yeah, exactly. It’s almost religious… we might never find aliens/see gods, but imagine the possibilities if we do!
SETI may not be a waste of time . . . but BOINC* sure as hell is. It sucks.
*the program by which you help SETI by “loaning” it your CPU to help in the search whenever your computer is idle. 
Perhaps, but I don’t think people would react that much. I think there would be some awe, some individual skepticism, but for the most part, I think people would accept it readily.
I realize we can’t help our radio transmissions, but as mentioned above, there have been some specific attempts to make things easy for the aliens to decipher 
Why is it a smart idea to send all kinds of information about ourselves out into space on purpose?
Why do the people behind such efforts naively assume that any space-faring civilization will be benign? What if things are much weirder out there than we think? What if there’s a paranoid xenophobic civilization out there that eliminates the “competition” before it can even get started?
just a fun speculation…
This actually seems to me to be far more likely than the benign alien model. The Universe is finite and therefore has finite resources. Any space fairing species is gonna be extremely resource dependant, therefore any species capable of passing on high technology to us seems far more likely to just kill us, or pacify us in some other way, to their own benefit.
I’m a bit confused by the references to funding from our tax dollars, whether for or against, as I was under the impression that NASA completely dropped funding back in the 90s and that, other than a few grants here and there that people are able to get, it’s now privately funded, in large part by Paul Allen.
Whether you like SETI or not, why would you care how he spends his money?
“13” is prime in base 10, but not in base 5. In base 5, it’s actually divisible by 2.
You can send the million dollars to your favorite charity.
13 in base 10 is represented in base 5 as 23[sub]5[/sub]. It is still prime in base 5.
13[sub]5[/sub] and 13[sub]10[/sub] are two different numbers. Not “a number that is prime in base ten, but not prime in binary, or some other base.”
Or were you making a failed attempt to be funny?
now I’m confused.
Prime or not prime—I don’t understand how we would know.
Suppose we receive a message from aliens that looks like the numeral 1 followed by the numeral 3. (suppose it’s a graphic-like morse code, 1 black dot , then a blank space, and then 3 black dots.) How are we supposed to know if the aliens intended to say “thirteen” in base 10 or “one-three” in base 5 (which I think adds up to 8, if I’m counting on my fingers)
and if it is a long message (say, thousands or millions of numerals), how would we make any sense of it?
If it’s a long message, it’d be easy. If we see that they have symbols corresponding to the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4, but we never see a digit corresponding to 5, then they’re using base 5. And that’s only if they’re just sending a bunch of numbers with no context. If they do things like write equations using those symbols, then we can not only figure out how to read the numbers, but what symbols they use for various operations. There’s a good example of this sort of decoding in Contact (the book; the movie glosses over a lot of the details).
An intercepted internal communication could very well be just as you describe. It’s not intended to communicate with others who are likely to be using other bases. Just the existence of a message distinguishable from static would be enough for SETI to claim a huge success.
Intentional messages would likely have some thought given to this problem. For example Earth’s own Evpatoria message: bitmap image description in PDF
“13” in base 5 equals 5 * 1 + 3, which equals 8 in base 10. 8 is obviously divisible by two. I think that maybe “8” is never prime, no matter which base you are using.
So you’re really serious about this?
“13” in base 5 is not the same number as “13” in base 10. Attempting to force such mathematical equivocation is silly.
Except that 13[sub]5[/sub] isn’t even a prime in base 10, while the claim was that any base 10 prime number would be prime using any base. 13[sub]10[/sub] is a prime in any base, whether it’s displayed as D[sub]16[/sub], 23[sub]5[/sub], or 1101[sub]2[/sub].
aguirretherathofgod, perhaps it would be easier to see if we took bases out of the picture altogether.
Take this many objects: * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Using all the objects, try to arrange them into rows and columns that form a rectangle without any left over:
or
or
It can’t be done. No matter what numeric representation you give (* * * * * * * * * * * * *) it cannot be shown as a product of two integers. Your “13” base 5 is this many objects: * * * * * * * *
And that can be factored:
Sure because 13 in base 5 is 8 in base 10. Which was my original point.
But 8 in base 10 isn’t a prime number, so it has absolutely nothing to do with the claim that you were rebutting.
Edited: Typo
… other than * and * * * * * * * * * * * * *, of course.
You may be trying to make a joke here, I’m still not sure.
But on the chance you’re serious and still not seeing the difference between what you’re saying and what others are saying about prime number, let me try this:
You’re confusing numerals and numbers, two very different things. Numerals are just a way we can write a representation for a number. the PC apeman’s very excellent post shows why equating 13[sub]5[/sub] with 13[sub]10[/sub] is wrong. They are two different numbers, which happen to be written using the same numerals, and even then only if you omit the base designator.
For any given number, it is either prime or not, regardless of the method you choose to write it down. Looking at DMC’s post, you see that 13[sub]10[/sub] is equal to 23[sub]5[/sub], and is still prime. The way you write it cannot change the actual quantity to which you’re referring.
Exactly. Because 13 in base 5 is the same thing as 8 in base 10.