N pretty much is "arbitrary-length information theory". As soon as you leave the realm of the finite, you end up with N. I'm not convinced that any alien civili

N pretty much is "arbitrary-length information theory". As soon as you leave the realm of the finite, you end up with N. I'm not convinced that any alien civilization could get very far mathematically or computationally without reinventing N somewhere, even if unintentionally (e.g, how does one state the halting problem).