Unknown Artefact (or artifact) Community Thread - The Canonn

[bartmoss]

Well, on the up side, at least that means we have a little more structure in the symbols. Assuming that the remaining symbols gathered so far are correct, it is really starting to look like the - and ' in a given group seem to only occur in runs of no more than 2. So if there are is already a sequence of -- then the next seems very likely to be a '

Not sure how long that property will hold, or if it is significant. Guess we just need more data

Yeah, so far there are no 111, 000 or longer combination of either bit. Which also means that the first symbol I have - 00100 - is the first possible string; ignoring the 3-bit ones that I couldn't really make out.

That said, assuming that this rule holds true, the possible combinations would be:

001
010
100
101
110

100, 101 and 110 would be redundant with longer length sequences with leading zeroes, if we assume that we're indeed looking at numerical values.

Of course, we do have 01001 and 001001, for example.

Are there any known 4-purr length signals?

 

[Eolan]

Hey guys, totally glued to this thread! Keep up the good work!

One question. Have you guys tried letting it destroy your ship? Maybe it's actually taking the ship apart bit by bit, and transporting it somewhere? Sorry if it's already been suggested or is a dumb idea but it seems like a definite effect it has, and in that sense might be the obvious angle recently alluded to. I find it hard to believe nothing happens while in witch space with it. Also have you guys taken it far enough into the void that there are no stations nearby? What sound would it emit then?

 

[wilkie79]

probably dumb but what if you shoot it with 1 of the PP weapons

If you were to use a PP weapon, the Retributor would be best, to warm the UA up.

 

[bitstorm]

Are there any known 4-purr length signals?

One here in the 2nd cycle : https://www.dropbox.com/s/siv3iwma8mw8844/ross_154_aster.mp3?dl=0 though arguably there's perhaps a preceeding mini-purr.

 

[daygobah]

I looked at my spectrograph and seen a patter and it reminded me of something mathimatical

I see a pattern of 1 2 3 6
[url]http://i1164.photobucket.com/albums/q576/daygobah/wildguess_zps7lutmcss.jpg[/URL]

If you continue that 1 2 3 6 7 14 16 32 ......

n - n * 2

Also i did a search for 1 2 3 6 and comes up with a Chemical

1,2,3,6-Tetrahydropyridine

Used to form ene-endo-spirocyclic ammonium ylids for [2,3]-sigmatropic rearrangement to pyrroloazepinones and oxazepinones.


http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/aldrich/134759?lang=en®ion=CA

If you look carefully at the UA object i am even seeing more of this

1 2 3 6 7 14 16 32

 

[bitstorm]

Hey guys, totally glued to this thread! Keep up the good work!

One question. Have you guys tried letting it destroy your ship? Maybe it's actually taking the ship apart bit by bit, and transporting it somewhere? Sorry if it's already been suggested or is a dumb idea but it seems like a definite effect it has, and in that sense might be the obvious angle recently alluded to. I find it hard to believe nothing happens while in witch space with it. Also have you guys taken it far enough into the void that there are no stations nearby? What sound would it emit then?

Honestly there are no dumb ideas, as it stands pretty much everyone I think is groping in the dark here..

But just to say on all the destroying, selling, blowing up suggestions....

The reality is we just don't have enough UAs, we have 2 only. (and a group of people constantly searching for new ones to no avail).

I mean I think stuff like this *could* be attempted but there'd have to be some really solid and convincing reasoning backing it up.

 

[Eoran]

While I appresiate the effort by every one investigating the binary angle of purs and blinks, i can't help thinking it's a dead end.

Yeah I know what you mean, it's certainly heading toward over thinking the problem

I agree, I think it's good to stay grounded here. Ideally what I'd like is to either find data that completely rules out the purrs, or find data that adds some kind of interpretation to it. Until then though, it seems like it has some mileage left.

There's still plenty of other stuff going on too, like UA owners retracing Halsey's route, etc.

- It's not in-game. You have to record and analyse to get any data.

We don't really need to record them, it just happens to be the only way to access the UA data unless you have one. The analysis is just writing down the purrs as you hear them and looking for patterns. Though the recordings do help for validation

- It's to slow. With binary we need 7 or 8 bits to get a character or a desent number. It would require a lot of purs or blinks even to get a system name or a set of coordinates.

- We don't realy have a separator. The honk could be use, but that gives at best one number per honk.

We're not assuming 7 or 8 bits, as the purr groups vary in width from 3 - 7 purrs in different recordings, though typically 5-6 purrs in a group. This could just mean a varying width code sequence (morse code has varying width characters for example).

True, we'd need lots of data here. Each cycle lasts between 30-45s depending on the system name, and you don't get many blocks before the UA needs to be scooped up again. That's something that bugs me about this too and would need to involve many consecutive drops. We might also be missing a block or two of data while the owner switches to camera drone to get close, so we're possibly working with gaps.

While there's no repeating pattern overall, we do see repeated purr sequences in each group, and it's starting to look like the sequences follow at least one structuring rule: runs of no more than 2 purrs of the same type. No idea if this is significant, or if it'll hold up under new data, but at least some parts of it don't appear to be random.

As for a simpler solution, it could also be that moving location changes the purrs in some way, such as the group length, but I'm not sure we have enough data on that.

 

[Dommarraa]

Unless the purrs can be shown to repeat at any one location, they are not a lot if use.

If they do not repeat, then they are either meaningless, or contain variable data such as the time, which is itself not particularly relevant.

If they do repeat, then we need the whole message from a location (probably more than 1 location) to decode the message.

That means that any ua hero would need to return to a location allready recorded, and do some more until we either piece the whole message sequence together, or they feel that purrs are a dead end. The ua hero's have first and last call on that

 

[bitstorm]

Yeah I know what you mean, it's certainly heading toward over thinking the problem

I agree, I think it's good to stay grounded here. Ideally what I'd like is to either find data that completely rules out the purrs, or find data that adds some kind of interpretation to it. Until then though, it seems like it has some mileage left.

There's still plenty of other stuff going on too, like UA owners retracing Halsey's route, etc.

For me (and I think probably a lot of people) the problem with the purrs is that we have found nothing repeatable or reproducible about them.

It's not like the morse where under a given set of circumstances you get consistently reproducible results.

The starting point for decoding the purrs I think is to find a pattern, it's just none have..

Not to say the above does not mean there isn't a pattern, there can still be a pattern in seemingly pseudo-random data.

Alternatively, if no pattern look for something similar outside of the purrs that changes in the same way the purrs do., ie something that's consistent with the purrs inconsistencies.

 

[Cmdr Clade]

A suggestion....

If someone finds a convoy with another UA onboard - don't steal it - follow them. Make sure you have a wake scanner of course. If you could get a number of jumps in, you could start to approximate a straight line, which you could then extend backward to get an idea where they came from. Might be useful?

 

[bartmoss]

One here in the 2nd cycle : https://www.dropbox.com/s/siv3iwma8mw8844/ross_154_aster.mp3?dl=0 though arguably there's perhaps a preceeding mini-purr.

Mh. 3rd cycle also has a mini-purr. In the past, I have counted them because they are clearly audible... even if they are low in volume... I'll add it to my repository, with the mini-purrs, but will make a note about it.

Thanks!

 

[pretzil]

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, or is a daft idea, and is purely based on watching one of the videos of the UA on my phone (I will try looking at more later when I'm not at work). It appears as if the lights on the UA switch on and off on an 18 second cycle, there seems to be the whale song noise when they illuminate, and a chittering noise when they extinguish. I was wondering if this was acting in a similar way to active and passive sonar. i.e. when they illuminate it "pings" the system and waits to see what information on planet/star types it receives. Then perhaps, the noises we hear in it's "passive" mode are it's interpretation of the results. Maybe, the high and low sounds in the results phase work in a similar way to the pegs in the old Mastermind game, i.e. completely correct for one type, close for another, and completely wrong for a third. Unfortunately not being on my computer I can't fully test this theory whilst looking at the various system maps for the recordings (also I have a 2 year old daughter who thinks that every time the computer is switched on it's to watch Balamory on YouTube, and a missus who thinks sorting out the garden is a much more worthwhile use of my time than trying to decipher the mystery of the UA).

Apologies if this idea has been discussed before.

 

[mrtree]

Kerresh asked if we're sure it's Morse.

Ok, the nav beacon. does it broadcast dits and dahs? Not those we've picked up via the stylised UA transmission, but the Nav beacon itself?

In light of Kerresh's question this could be important. If the nav beacon is transmitting Morse on a frequency and that frequency is interfering with the UA's signal then we are not seeing Morse 'from the UA', we're seeing signal squelch from the Nav beacon...I'm not sure if this makes sense.

I'm only raising this because of Kerresh...I find it hard to believe he'd throw the community a red-herring on this scale...

EDIT:

Or, to paraphrase Rizal above, is it just repeating what it hears from the Nav beacon?

Soontill lacked a Nav Beacon, but seemed to chitter out Soontill (at least in my hearing of it) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ-T7590WeA. I don't think it's parroting beacons, at least not directly.

Something I (specifically) haven't heard yet, but what if the UA isn't for navigation/scanning? What else needs to know exactly where it is & shouts it's location loudly for others to hear?

Our RemLock masks do. What if it's an alien escape pod?

- - - Updated - - -

Eegads so many SSs. =(

Braben, I know you're reading this.

Can you just add UAs to the shop please. I will happily pay £10 for one!

C'mon it's not as though they actually *do anything* is it? =p

I'm hoping for a 3D printed Unknown Artefact I can put on my desk.

 

[mrtree]

Unless the purrs can be shown to repeat at any one location, they are not a lot if use.

If they do not repeat, then they are either meaningless, or contain variable data such as the time, which is itself not particularly relevant.

If they do repeat, then we need the whole message from a location (probably more than 1 location) to decode the message.

That means that any ua hero would need to return to a location allready recorded, and do some more until we either piece the whole message sequence together, or they feel that purrs are a dead end. The ua hero's have first and last call on that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15G_NqIHURo might help here. I dropped it twice in the same location (Other than moving a couple meters to scoop it & re get under it).

- - - Updated - - -

Is there any difference in the frequency of the 'toxic waste' ticks in different systems? Do we have people with UAs in very different locations who could give a 'tick' timer so we can compare them?

I'm thinking about the possibility that the tick frequency is related to distance from a point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlVlMDf2p5k was recorded in Alioth (~220Ly from HIP 43688-ish, where RatKing's last recording was near). You should be able to compare them to look for this.

 

[Cmdr Clade]

Anyone played with this......https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet ? maybe the purrs are the telephony version of the morse signal?

 

[Wishblend]

Hmmm... so I've tried transcribing the higher purrs that start after the morse (so not the low-pitched breathing sounds - I wasn't sure if that's what a few of the others here have been talking about) from Ratking's last video, and, well, I just don't like it. Whilst it's not too difficult to identify low vs high pitched purrs, it's very difficult to get the pacing right. If it were morse, I'd expect the speed to be the same as it is for the system/celestial object name - but it's definitely not the same.

So this is my transcription of the three tests - with '|' representing a new sequence (after a morse burst), 'h' for high and 'l' for low. The spacings are reasonably accurate, I think, but there's too much ambiguity in it for my liking (so don't assume I've got it right!). Sometimes you get the purrs quite close together, but most of the time, the gap between them is just long enough to doubt whether it's, say 'hh' instead of 'h h'.

If you see '||', then it's because there were no purrs between two morse bursts.
There are quite a few 'lll' (and one '||') with question marks following - because I can't be sure if there are three purrs, one, or some other number.

|lh hlh|hh|lll(?)|l h|hhl ll(?) hh| (3:17 onwards)
||h lll(?)|h|hhh lhh|h lll(?)| (8:39 onwards)
|hlh|l hh lhh|lll(?)|hlh|h| (14:25 onwards)

Assigning high-pitched purrs to '.' and low pitched '-', with '|' being mapped to the end of word sign '/' I get this - this transcription:

#1: /-. .-./../---/- ./..- -- ../ => NR I O TE UMI
#2: //. ---/./... -../. ---/ => EO E SD EO
#3 /.-./- .. -../---/.-././ => R TID O R

Correct me if I'm wrong - but that looks like gibberish!

Flipping the interpretation so 'l' is dit, and 'h' is dah, also gives nothing of consequence.

I am actually falling asleep at my computer tho, so it's possible I've just written a post requesting that a green blackbird, called Bernard, is sent to my home ASAP, rather than the masterpiece I've written in my head!

Looks latin to me.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Eegads so many SSs. =(

Braben, I know you're reading this.

Can you just add UAs to the shop please. I will happily pay £10 for one!

C'mon it's not as though they actually *do anything* is it? =p

The store needs to sell stuffed toy Unknown Artefact plushies. When you hug them, they start to purr.

 

[bartmoss]

The store needs to sell stuffed toy Unknown Artefact plushies. When you hug them, they start to purr.

..or maybe to laugh at you. ;-(

 

[Smoky]

depending on what size they where i would by one for a pillow

 

[TFBUNDY]

I think they are just nav beacons. When the lights are one colour they are broadcasting in normal space, and when in the other colour they are broadcasting in another dimension (witch space or similar) so they are just nav beacon operating in two dimensions of space. Imho.