Thoughts on Morality and Periodic Table

I think that Aliums would have a periodic table. It represents a fundamental and necessary understanding of Chemistry (the laws of which are invariant) which is required to develop as a civilization. Missing out on an understanding of electron exchange and the structure of atoms, while also managing to develop space travel is like saying a culture could skip algebra and invent calculus.

Saying they could be too advanced to understand a periodic table also seems unlikely. GaBe141 mentioned the four humors as an analogy, which I think isn't applicable - the four humors was a completely incorrect theory, while the information contained in periodic table, and the conclusions it implies, are correct and always will be. Not everything that our alien pals want to do will need to be understood down to the quantum-level or whatever to do. It's like saying that one day mathematicians will be trying to model the stock market by simulating the neurons in millions of virtual stockbrokers, and as a civilization we will have forgotten how Brownian motion works.

But, I don't think we would necessarily be able to correctly recognize an alien periodic table delivered without any context. The underlying content may be the same, but the representation may be very different. For instance, we typically place the transition metals (which don't neatly fit in the 1-8 group structure) in the main section of the table, while also removing the lanthanides/actinides and displaying those separately. What's to say the aliens don't list their transition metals separately, or split the table up in some other way for their convenience? Their script will most likely be completely unrecognizable, so the numbers listed for each element would probably not be easily recognizable as numbers. Maybe they wont even have a graphical table, they'll just list all the elements in a wall of text like this one, with each line as a group and the transition metals and lanthanides/actinides listed on separate sheets. If I handed you three sheets of paper, each one just lines of Chinese characters, I would bet a lot of money that 'Periodic table' wouldn't be your first guess or even your tenth, regardless of whether you notice that there are eight lines on one sheet, and two on another etc.

/r/Destiny Thread