But that's again assuming an alien mind would use the same method of organizing things as a human.
There is a fundamental efficiency to math.
The reason storage is usually some type of cube. Nothing stacks more efficiently. Other things stack just as efficiently, but not when you flip them on all 3 axes they don't!
Ordering the Periodic Table of the elements in an above-mentioned boxy layout (3d practical! And it's basically a spreadsheet too!) is math-perfect, or close enough that a significant subset of alien intelligences that actually has use for jotting stuff down will do it that way.
The order of the elements is sorted on
weight and
traits. Weight ascends from Hydrogen on up. So why not just a single 1dimensional list of all the elements?
Because when you stack 'em up the way we've done, and only in that way, you get the different columns of elements that have the same traits, but moreso.
It also helps that, like solar system orbital trajectories and multidimensional maths, it predicted certain elements's traits before they were discovered.
There is a natural order to the elements.
Granted, you could turn the chart on its side, or upside down, even flip the thing, but the order stays the same, and so does the 'canyon' formation, beginning at Hydrogen..... dot dot dot… Helium, and eventually filling up more and more. Why is Helium the natural stop point? Because it's the point where that particular orbit of electrons is full and nonreactive. Which is why the inert noble gases are on that last pillar. When you 'start a new row', you tend to start at the most reactive.
I... might be wrong on some of these details, and exceptions do exist, but the point is: The periodic table of the elements is as obvious as the wheel or the shipping crate or Pi.
It's math, and blunt practicality, and
a huge amount of the reasons why we do things a certain way and not another way isn't some fetishizable cultural quirk of the earth homo sapiens,
it's just the most boring, simple, efficient way to do things for anyone and everyone.
Everything from the shape of a thing that can hold a liquid up against gravity, to hydrogen-oxygen engines to the function of fission weapons is without a doubt an experience shared by a majority of sophonts in the universe/multiverse/branes with similar laws of physics.
An 'alien mind' wouldn't organize things differently
just to be different. They'd have to have a
reason. They (and us!) would still just find the most efficient way to utilize
most Rosetta stones.
Your xenoculture lesson for the day. /end McKay+Jackson Collab
Gunboat diplomacy is hardly a novel concept though.... I think that the only real difference between that and my Space Rangers is that they send ONE guy, armed to the teeth. The implied message being "We're explicitly not an invading force, but take careful note: this is what ONE of our guys can bring to bear. Do not provoke us into sending two."
