Rosetta Stone of Alien Languages Found, Written in Three Unknown Scripts

A trilingual inscription discovered on asteroid 2024-KL7 has been hailed as 'the Rosetta Stone of xenolinguistics' — and immediately revealed to be useless for the purpose that Rosetta Stones are supposed to serve. The original Rosetta Stone worked because one of its three scripts, Ancient Greek, was already understood. By comparing the Greek text to the two unknown scripts, scholars decoded Egyptian hieroglyphics. The asteroid inscription contains three scripts. All three are unknown. None provides a key to the others. 'It's a Rosetta Stone where you don't know any of the languages,' said Dr. Gabriel Moreau, the first xenolinguist to examine the inscription. 'Imagine finding a document written in three alphabets you've never seen, expressing ideas you've never encountered, in languages that have no relationship to anything in human experience. That's what we have. It's very exciting and completely useless.' The three scripts have been designated Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. Alpha consists of angular marks that may be logographic. Beta features flowing curves that suggest a cursive syllabary. Gamma appears to be a series of dots arranged in geometric patterns that may encode information spatially rather than linearly. Researchers have confirmed that all three texts appear to convey the same message, based on statistical analysis of symbol frequency and distribution. 'We know they say the same thing,' said Dr. Moreau. 'We just don't know what that thing is.' Three competing theories have emerged. Linguists at MIT believe the text is a greeting. Linguists at Cambridge believe it is a warning. Linguists at the Sorbonne believe it is a restaurant menu, based on the repetitive structure and what they argue are 'clear pricing indicators.' 'If it's a menu, I'd like to see the restaurant,' said Dr. Moreau. 'If it's a warning, I'd like to know what we're being warned about. If it's a greeting, it's the most elaborately encoded hello in the history of communication.' The inscription remains undecoded. A fourth theory, proposed by a graduate student, suggests it may be assembly instructions for the asteroid itself.