A message can disclose its own geometry
A universal, zero-knowledge method reconstructs the dimensional form of non-random data—even when sender, encoding and intended medium are unknown.
In depthDossier: Divergent Intelligence
What next?
Whether intelligence arrives from another world or emerges from our own machines, the problem is the same: how do we understand an entity that does not think as we do?
Review the contributionsWho we are
A research group devoted to alien semantics: communication between divergent intelligences, from extraterrestrial life to artificial minds.
Where listening programmes have treated a signal as an endpoint, we treat it as a beginning. We do not stop at carrier and waveform. We push through to form, syntax and meaning. Because a message found is not a message understood.
Messages without receivers. Minds without shared worlds. Intelligence without common ground. The Arrival Institute studies how meaning can be reconstructed when the sender, the language, and even the ontology are unknown.
Founded on peer-reviewed and preprint research in message reconstruction, and non-human communication when no shared language, culture, or biological substrate can be assumed.
Comparative catalogue / 01—12
Messages Without Receivers
Undeciphered objects, lost civilisations, and alien readers: twelve studies in the uncertainty between signal, message and noise.
The Archaeology of Unreadable Minds
Phaistos Disc
Crete · c. 1700 BCE
Linear A tablet
Minoan Crete · undeciphered
Indus seal
Indus Valley · c. 2600–1900 BCE
Rongorongo tablet
Rapa Nui · 19th century
Voynich Manuscript
Europe · early 15th century
Proto-Elamite tablet
Iran · c. 3100–2900 BCE
Cascajal Block
Mexico · c. 1st millennium BCE
Pioneer plaque
Outbound message · 1972–73
Arecibo Message
Interstellar transmission · 1974
Voyager Golden Record
Outbound archive · 1977
Wow! signal printout
Narrowband event · 1977
Peryton / false SETI signal
Terrestrial interference · closure
The mission
To study communication and control across divergent intelligences—from unknown biological life to artificial agents whose internal logic may be equally alien.
Main contributions
Vol. 01 / Sec. 04Non-random data carries spatial memory
Geometric and topological dimensions can be recovered from structure intrinsic to a signal, without a shared codebook or prior assumptions.
In depthPerfect alignment is formally unattainable
Managed diversity among influenceable agents offers a contingent safety strategy when complete prediction and control cannot be guaranteed.
In depthMessages that travel across scale
Self-similar fractal carriers can encode information across multiple time and space scales reducing assumptions about a receiver’s space-time scale.
In depth01
Science News
June 2023
Science News feature / June 2023
Here’s how we could begin decoding an alien message using math
Science News · Matthew Hutson
The feature explains how the team’s mathematical method searches possible dimensions and detects local and global order, allowing a non-random message to reveal the geometry in which it was intended—even under noise.
Read the Science News feature