this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
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It's neat to think about what units an alien civilization would come up with independently. Like the Plank Distance is fundamental to physics, so they'd probably have something for that.
Degrees Celsius is based on freezing and boiling point of water, so if they came up with a base 10 numbering system and water is key to their biology, then they'd probably come up with that.
A calorie is the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1L of water by 1C. A liter is a volume of a cube 0.1m on each side. The meter was originally ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and north pole (and subsequent redefinitions are based on that original measurement). They wouldn't come up with the meter, and they wouldn't come up with liters or calories, either.
Water’s boiling point and freezing point depends on the pressure of the local atmosphere unfortunately! But I like your logic.
Hopefully they'd come up with a better numbering system than base 10. Base 10 is the worst part of metric tbh.
Every base is base 10 dumdum
0, 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 20, 21...
e: starting at 0 to not shame programmers.
That's true. It should really be referenced by the number before 10 (e.g. Base 9 for 0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10).
Woah, I had never considered that. To think, all these years I was on the side of "initial index is 1." I've unknowingly been using "initial index is 0," since I started using numbers.
oh-my-god-i-get-it-now.jpeg
IMO it should be called "base 9+1". It is a "base 10" system because each order of magnitude is 10x as big as the previous one. But, the key thing is to know which digit is the last one before you roll over.
Is your issue with metric, or with the fact that everything in life uses a base 10 (which should really be called a base 9+1) system?
Waters boiling point isn't a constant though... it's dependent on the atmosphere.
Hell there's also no telling if our preference to base 10 is relative to our number of fingers so neither of those are givens.
Base 10 is also cultural. Babylon used 60, ancient Egypt had 12 (they counted on the bones in their fingers), Rome had 5, and my wife just spent 10 minutes arguing for 8
All maths is done in base 10.
Because of Al-Kwarazimi. Hindu-Arabic math is base 10 and Al-Kwarazimi developed a really good method for doing math as well as inventing algebra. Base 10 spread with his methods. It looks like the Chinese were also using base 10 as far back as during the Shang dynasty. Meanwhile Europeans and their cultural descendants still use base 5 for ceremonial purposes (yes, even in MMXXV)
As an engineer life would be easier if we all thought in base 12, for my wife as a computer scientist life would be easier if it was in 2^n. 10 is a really convenient sized number for arithmetic and algebra though. Babylon was insane i genuinely can't imagine trying to teach children the name and order of 60 digits to the point of instinctive mathematical understanding
No no, ALL MATHS is done in base 10.
K
What were digits 10 to 59 like in Babylonian?
You might enjoy the book Project Hail Mary if you haven’t read it!