UAs, Barnacles and other mysteries Thread 8 - The Canonn

Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.

Layne Vakarian

Layne Vakarian
LordZoltan said:
I agree. It's a self-contained package. Just like the morse - both when it gave the nearest body's name; and latterly the ship diagram.
Click to expand...
So I'm going to go with some hyper-simplicity here. Although I'm not sure about execution. Probably need multiple Commanders. Not discounting the 4 'corner' symbols - I haven't managed to shoehorn them into this idea yet, although if it looks like it has merit, maybe somebody else can.

Anyway: What if it's more of a 'clock' than a 'map'? Can we 'read the clock' from the positions of Merope 5, it's moons and/or Merope itself?

Which is why I am thinking multiple Commanders.

I was going to expand on this line of thinking, but I'll wait and see if it has legs first...
 

Nagual

Nagual
yobrotom said:
Agreed but given the number of players now looking for something I think we can spare the resources to chase a red herring.
Click to expand...

Which is why we still need more info from him, even if it's to say it's a different Tip Off that leads to it. Or to say it's not in any of the sites we know about and have visited. Or that he is 100% sure it was alien, and why he was so sure?
 

Jack Dinn

J
Panzertard said:
Having Pi to appear may be a side effect of what FD designed it. I hope not.
I'll treat it as it didn't come as an FD accident but rather "see this number, it means you and I can talk, we understand the significance of this number. Now go use it in this message"
Click to expand...

Where has pi come from? If it's from anything to do with the circle, then it seems doubtful we're supposed to get pi other than incidentally. You bung a few measurements of a circle together, and you can't help but encounter pi. There's a fascinating theory that pi is accidentally coded into the pyramids by way (if memory serves) of the use of rollers to move the stone slabs.

If we're getting pi from the binary digits (and how tantalizing to think that that double rainbow signifies a floating point!) I'm torn. As explained earlier on the previous thread, why use three digit binary numbers to code four digits of pi in base ten? Wouldn't it make more sense to just put pi in binary?

It's a frustrating ambiguity, though - I can imagine that discrepancy being a fudge, either deliberate or accidental, but I've been thinking of first contact films and one that I've not seen mentioned is Red Planet Mars. In RPM contact with an alien race is (ostensibly) arrived at by beaming the first few digits of pi at Mars. Previously, Earth was just getting their messages echoed back and couldn't tell if it was a literal echo, or an intelligent species. They beamed a few digits of pi at the planet, and Mars beamed a longer sequence of pi back.
 

autoexec.bat

autoexec.bat
Here is a breakdown of basic elements:
484x7tH.png
 

John Stoutbeard

John Stoutbeard
Jack Dinn said:
Where has pi come from? If it's from anything to do with the circle, then it seems doubtful we're supposed to get pi other than incidentally. You bung a few measurements of a circle together, and you can't help but encounter pi. There's a fascinating theory that pi is accidentally coded into the pyramids by way (if memory serves) of the use of rollers to move the stone slabs.

If we're getting pi from the binary digits (and how tantalizing to think that that double rainbow signifies a floating point!) I'm torn. As explained earlier on the previous thread, why use three digit binary numbers to code four digits of pi in base ten? Wouldn't it make more sense to just put pi in binary?

It's a frustrating ambiguity, though - I can imagine that discrepancy being a fudge, either deliberate or accidental, but I've been thinking of first contact films and one that I've not seen mentioned is Red Planet Mars. In RPM contact with an alien race is (ostensibly) arrived at by beaming the first few digits of pi at Mars. Previously, Earth was just getting their messages echoed back and couldn't tell if it was a literal echo, or an intelligent species. They beamed a few digits of pi at the planet, and Mars beamed a longer sequence of pi back.
Click to expand...

Correct, it can be an accident. we don't know.
Supporting evidence when we have a valid thesis will give us the answer.
I'm not discarding it or other (universal) constructs I find. I try to find a use for it. Pi is still universal.
Edit: The binary is base8 btw.

I do discard other human constructs.
 
Last edited:

Corvus_Dal

C
Jack Dinn said:
Where has pi come from? If it's from anything to do with the circle, then it seems doubtful we're supposed to get pi other than incidentally. You bung a few measurements of a circle together, and you can't help but encounter pi. There's a fascinating theory that pi is accidentally coded into the pyramids by way (if memory serves) of the use of rollers to move the stone slabs.

If we're getting pi from the binary digits (and how tantalizing to think that that double rainbow signifies a floating point!) I'm torn. As explained earlier on the previous thread, why use three digit binary numbers to code four digits of pi in base ten? Wouldn't it make more sense to just put pi in binary?

It's a frustrating ambiguity, though - I can imagine that discrepancy being a fudge, either deliberate or accidental, but I've been thinking of first contact films and one that I've not seen mentioned is Red Planet Mars. In RPM contact with an alien race is (ostensibly) arrived at by beaming the first few digits of pi at Mars. Previously, Earth was just getting their messages echoed back and couldn't tell if it was a literal echo, or an intelligent species. They beamed a few digits of pi at the planet, and Mars beamed a longer sequence of pi back.
Click to expand...


I dont want to derail anything here, but what if these lifeforms communicating with us through the probe do not count in 10's like we do?

What would Pi be in a number system based on 8's?

There was a game based on Rama, a book by Arthur C Clarke that tackled this as a logic puzzle. It was a nightmare for my 6 year old self, but it always stuck with me.

Should a different view of numbers be taken in to consideration?

For my part, I will be exploring 5c for a few days yet. I can't do much else as I will be moving soon, and thus have no internet for a few days.
 

hammerreborn

H
Corvus_Dal said:
I dont want to derail anything here, but what if these lifeforms communicating with us through the probe do not count in 10's like we do?

What would Pi be in a number system based on 8's?

There was a game based on Rama, a book by Arthur C Clarke that tackled this as a logic puzzle. It was a nightmare for my 6 year old self, but it always stuck with me.

Should a different view of numbers be taken in to consideration?

For my part, I will be exploring 5c for a few days yet. I can't do much else as I will be moving soon, and thus have no internet for a few days.
Click to expand...

Lol I loved that game (Rama) and as someone who has always loved math that was my favorite section of the game.
 

Muetdhiver

Muetdhiver
Corvus_Dal said:
I dont want to derail anything here, but what if these lifeforms communicating with us through the probe do not count in 10's like we do?

What would Pi be in a number system based on 8's?
Click to expand...

It would be 3.11037. Not that it would really matter, in the end pi is still pi, whatever the base you write it in.
Here are the facts : we got a circle, and arround it four numbers in binary format. When interpreted in decimal base,
they write down pi. It could be a *huge* coincidence, but I tend to revert to Occam razor principle : the simplest
explaination is probably the right one : we got a circle with pi written around it and a bunch of stuff/lines that seem to
delimitate angles*.

As for the question of why the UP would use decimal base... the UA communicated in morse so it appears that
whatever is trying to communicate with us at least has a grasp of our coms format and such.

*assuming the diagonal line is at ~135° (I know, assumptions...) we got ~3/4 pi, ~5/12 pi, pi/6, pi/6 and pi/2 (or something like this)
 
Last edited:

Belthize

Belthize
Siranui said:
The binary numbers around the sphere/circle read '3142'.
Click to expand...

Only if you arbitrarily start in the upper right corner and read clockwise. There is nothing universal about clockwise. We only have that concept because initial sundials were predominately in the northern hemisphere. From a pure function of the signal in time and frequency order from lowest to highest the sequence is 4213 (what's 6*9 Base10 represented in Base13 ?)

At some point we have to step back and remember that imperfect humans ultimately made this pictograph, not real honest to god aliens or the lost or whatever. Sadly we must factor in human bias since ultimately some employee at FDEV drew it (probably in a pub on a napkin).

Not sure where that truth leaves us, the simplest answer is 'It's binary, it's a sequence and is intentionally out of order to draw attention to a process: step 1, step 2, step 3 etc'. Simplest isn't necessarily synonymous with correct though.

I'm fairly convinced that's why the lat and long lines aren't drawn properly, it doesn't convey meaning, they just drew what felt right.

I find the idea that the angle in the bottom right is the golden ratio (137.5) more compelling than that the binary sequence is intended to convey Pi. Still yet to find any significance to 1.62 in the temporal spacings though.
 

John Stoutbeard

John Stoutbeard
Muetdhiver said:
It would be 3.11037. Not that it would really matter, in the end pi is still pi, whatever the base you write it in.
Here are the facts : we got a circle, and arround it three number in binary format. When interpreted in decimal base,
they write down pi. It could be a *huge* coincidence, but I tend to revert to Occam razor principle : the simplest
explaination is probably the right one : we got a circle with pi written around it and a bunch of stuff/lines that seem to
delimitate angles*.

As for the question of why the UP would use decimal base... the UA communicated in morse so it appears that
whatever is trying to communicate with us at least has a grasp of our coms format and such.

*assuming the diagonal line is at ~135° (I know, assumptions...) we got ~3/4 pi, ~5/12 pi, pi/6, pi/6 and pi/2 (or something like this)
Click to expand...

I'm with you on that, that's what I've been doing as well. o7
I'll see if I can publish my wrongfindings in a google sheet soon, it's too many spreadsheets already.
 

Micha

Micha
Mike Juliett Kilo said:
By the way, to those people thinking that the message must be very simple as they want us to understand it, here is an example real message that we have sent for aliens. See if you can understand it:

http://www.activeseti.org/images/evpatoria_2003.jpg
Click to expand...

That is so nifty, I hadn't seen this one before! Thanks for sharing (and it's fun to deconstruct, but yeah, pretty simple, at least the first few sections teaching maths).

More interestingly would have been to just attach the radio signal itself and see if we could have deconstructed it from first principles to get the image (correctly) out of it. Unfortunately the page (I did some googling after having a bit of an initial play) doesn't say anything about -how- the picture was encoded and sent.
 
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom