Fwiw the movie Contact got this part right, the aliens sent a language based on "universal" mathematical concepts, and once the humans recognized the "primer",

Fwiw the movie Contact got this part right, the aliens sent a language based on "universal" mathematical concepts, and once the humans recognized the "primer", or translation key, they were able to reconstruct the data the aliens sent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePa6eUxhkYo&t=4m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePa6eUxhkYo&t=4m40s