Australian scientists have unveiled a startling idea that could one day help humanity speak to extraterrestrial intelligence - and the key, they say, is already buzzing around on Earth.
Australian scientists have unveiled an idea that could one day help humanity speak to extraterrestrial intelligence — and the key, they say, is already buzzing around on Earth. If humans ever make contact with alien life, communication will not be as simple as exchanging greetings. Any message would need to travel across interstellar distances, taking years - even decades - to reach its destination and return.
How do you communicate with a species that doesn’t share your language, culture, or biology? According to new research, the answer may lie in a “universal language” inspired by one of Earth’s most unexpected creatures - the honeybee.
With six legs, five eyes, and a social structure radically different from humans, bees are considered among the most alien-like species on the planet. Yet despite these dramatic differences, both humans and bees have evolved remarkably complex systems of communication and cooperation.
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Scientists have discovered that bees share another crucial trait with humans - the ability to understand mathematics.
This surprising overlap has led researchers to suggest that mathematics may form the foundation of a universal language capable of bridging the gap between Earth and extraterrestrial intelligence.
The nearest star system lies 4.4 light-years away, meaning even the fastest signals would take at least 10 years to receive a response. That makes learning an alien language through trial and error — as imagined in science fiction films like Arrival — deeply impractical.
Instead, scientists argue that a shared logical framework, independent of spoken words or symbols, may be the only viable option.
To test this idea, researchers turned to bees — a species separated from humans by hundreds of millions of years of evolution.
Co-author Dr Adrian Dyer, of Monash University, told the Daily Mail: 'Because bees and humans are separated by about 600 million years in evolutionary time, we developed very different physiology, brain size, culture.'
Yet despite these vast differences, bees appear to grasp fundamental mathematical concepts.
In earlier studies, Dr Dyer and his team designed experiments where bees could earn sugar water by solving simple mathematical tasks. The results were astonishing.
Bees demonstrated the ability to add and subtract, identify odd and even quantities, and even understand the concept of zero — once thought to be exclusive to humans and higher primates.
Even more remarkably, the insects learned to associate abstract symbols with numerical values, mirroring a rudimentary version of how humans learn Arabic numerals.
The fact that such a radically different organism can comprehend mathematical ideas strengthens the argument that maths transcends biology, culture, and language.
The concept itself isn’t new. When NASA launched Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1977, the spacecraft carried Golden Records engraved with mathematical and physical information designed to communicate with intelligent life.
Similarly, the famous Arecibo radio message sent into space in 1974 used 1,679 binary digits to convey numbers, atomic elements, and the basic structure of DNA.
Still, scientists have long debated whether alien intelligence would interpret mathematics in the same way humans do.
Now, the researchers say evidence from bees suggests that maths truly may be universal.
Dr Dyer says, 'When we tested bees on mathematical type problems, and they could build an understanding to solve the questions we posed, it was very interesting, and convincing that an alien species could share similar capabilities.' ‘Now we know maths can be solved by bees, we have a solid basis to think about how to try to communicate with alien intelligence.’
'Mathematics, which was first developed by philosophers to communicate complex problems more efficiently, is already a language we humans use every day.
'At a simple level, binary coded information would be a start, then, like we humans learn language through many "baby steps", we learn with another species to build a commonly understood language framework.'
