UAs, Barnacles and other mysteries Thread 8 - The Canonn

[TFW Primus]

I've genuinely given up on trying to interpret this diagram as anything specifically related to a location for now.

For similar-ish reasons to Domm earlier, but not because we don't have a good enough 'version' of it.

I don't think we need a better version of it; but I also don't think the angles are important either - it looks like a trigonometric puzzle, but it's not IMHO - it's a logic puzzle and when the correct interpretation comes along, it'll be obvious. In terms of measurements, although I was right there with the on-screen protractors - it just doesn't seem right. And even if you can come up with some angles (bearing in mind someone else will come up with different angles too!) there's no satisfying way to interpret them that isn't the equivalent of looking at Varatian Tea Leaves and thinking you're going to win the lottery.

That doesn't mean, however, that I don't think there's something we're missing - some other part which helps - I think that's incredibly likely.

For me, now, while I will still continue to stare at the image every day for a little while, I'm more interested in where the things are found 'in the wild' - where the Feds are getting them from. I think there could be something about that location that could prove interesting indeed. Not only that, but it would also give us more Probes to, uh, probe.

I have to agree. I think this is being way over complicated with all the math. I seriously doubt that FD would put complex mathematics in the game for us to solve. This is much more likely to be a more standard type of logic puzzle. Think about the UA and the puzzle presented there. That's the way we should be approaching this UP puzzle as well.

I feel like the blokes that printed out the diagram and folded the angled quadrant were on to something, just can't pinpoint it.

 

[Edd Jordan]

Have we got a 6min recording yet of the UP and if so where is the sound file? i agree that the image from the spectro is as good as it can be. but there is more bits to the puzzle. and we need them for us to work out what the key(image) dose and or fits into.

 

[DialBforBiscuit]

There are limits to what you can communicate when neither side shares a language. If I want to point to a specific place and I don't know where my recipient will be (or when) when he receives it, I'm very limited in my ability to communicate "this is a map". The information has to be extremely simplified (to avoid confusion) so they can GET to where I want them to go. Anything extra and the chances increase that they won't understand.

In that case, my best hope is to draw a map, and hope one of their interpretations begins with the assumption that "this is a map".

You're still starting at a dangerous place. The UP isn't the whole puzzle of what's going on with this Alien(?) communication attempts. The UA used morse code as a mediator for what it was seeing and communicating that to us. Testing confirmed it quickly. There's no reason that these things can't give us enough information to get a clear conclusion. It might point to somewhere, but we aren't there -yet-. If we get there at all. There's something much simpler right in front of us.

When it comes to simple maps, in space, positions of stars are universal. 4 grouping of stars 90 degrees from each other will only look a certain way from a single point (Not a chance that's what's happening, is there? Radial line is the only hiccup here. So probably not. ). Like our constellations from earth. If you move away from earth the constellations won't look right or appear at all. On a planet, really obvious landmarks are used. Canyons, mountains, craters, things with very unique shapes that can't be confused. There's plenty of ways to make a map without any use of language.

We need to focus on what's testable, cause a circle or sphere will fit anything in space. What can we use in the image to test, get, or convert information? Until something from the UA or UP says the image is to be used as a map, we shouldn't treat it as a map.

 

[damajoo]

Its a decoder ring. One of my puzzle guys already decoded 1 thing from it. apprently FD are teaching us thargoid. who knew!

Yeah its not sharing atm. I think hes making sure that everything is 100%.

Its a sphere yes but its also a ring. Decoder Ring.

How can I think when we already had someone decode something off of the UP?

Could you just please stop ? Either you share your findings , (or the findings of "your puzzle guy") or just shut up. Please.

I just can't bear those "i know all, but cannot, will not tell you"-Guys any more. Really.

Just share what you, oh sorry, your puzzle guy, found out, and we all could evaluate it and work on it.

There is no bad theory. The only bad theory is the one from guys like you, claiming to found out something and not telling. [down] [down]

I'm so fed up with people making claims about alien ships "Oh, cannot tell you", people claiming "decoded it", - "nooo cannot tell you".

If you, or your puzzle guy,cannot share, and don't want to share, than get the !§$%&# out of here, and let people do their thing. [sour]

Nothing to see here for you, as you know it all already.

 

[Yagi Uda]

UA spectogram analysis

I only wandered into all of this after seeing the spectrogram image in the mainstream media. My focus has been on the "data burst" in the UP sound 5 seconds before the globe image appears. I know other analysis has been done on this which has been unsuccessful so far, although it does look like it could contain information.

I've looked at this data in a software audio analyser, cleaned it up with high and low pass filters, and tried to run it through decoders that I could find. Although to begin with it looked as if there were two closely spaced peaks in amplitude which might be telling of a data transmission, upon closer inspection it doesn't look clean enough to be valid. It's not a set of two tones, but the prevalence of two tones means it's not a multi-frequency multi-tone transmission either, as the use of other frequencies would be more spread.

I was considering that similar to the morse messages, the in-game intent could be that these alien messages are meant for us to decode, and are in the same format as those that humans previously sent out. Interstellar morse messages have been sent from Earth in the past. (Aliens would have had to be on a trip close to Earth to receive them though...) I spent some time trying to track down the telemetry formats used in the Voyager / Pioneer probes, as this might have been understood to be "Earth language" by anyone listening in. The Voyagers also had a golden disk that contained audio and picture data, but no obvious details about the coding. Essentially I was looking for a relevant 'low bandwidth data modulation' something to do with space probes / SETI that we could use to help decode the data. This would be something to search for, but yet be within grasp i.e. within the feasible limits of how difficult we think the puzzle should be. The message might follow other examples in the sci-fi genre e.g. Contact, Star Trek of how messages are sent and constructed, as much as those attempted in real life. The clues would be there and would show us what to do...

The Aricebo message was FSK, and also quite long, so we can rule that out. There were some fun parallels found on YouTube with folks examining data from the 1977 Wow! message, or from space probes using similar spectograms. The early space probes used pulse position modulation and pulse width modulation, (later pulse code modulation) which might fit the 'noise' more so than any phase or frequency shift keying where the data should be more obvious by eye and by ear. There are archives online of old satellite telemetry - I've been trying to compare them with no success. (Imagine what my family think with me listening intently to beeps and buzzes.) With just the 1.5 seconds of data there would be enough to encode several characters to give co-ordinates, a system name, or the next step in the puzzle if it was a known coding scheme. It's not going to be a new picture.

Problem is there's no easy way that I can find to determine the coding type / rate, and no commonly available 'universal' decoder software, so my conclusion is that it is a dead end as it's "too difficult", or more likely now given the picture it may just be noise there after all...

Spoiler

https://imgur.com/7hj7lHf

 

[frostypaw]

Not just his puzzle guy but one of his puzzle guys - the intent being to sound like you're the head of a whole group who serve you.

 

[CMDR-AD]

I've genuinely given up on trying to interpret this diagram as anything specifically related to a location for now.

For similar-ish reasons to Domm earlier, but not because we don't have a good enough 'version' of it.

I don't think we need a better version of it; but I also don't think the angles are important either - it looks like a trigonometric puzzle, but it's not IMHO - it's a logic puzzle and when the correct interpretation comes along, it'll be obvious. In terms of measurements, although I was right there with the on-screen protractors - it just doesn't seem right. And even if you can come up with some angles (bearing in mind someone else will come up with different angles too!) there's no satisfying way to interpret them that isn't the equivalent of looking at Varatian Tea Leaves and thinking you're going to win the lottery.

That doesn't mean, however, that I don't think there's something we're missing - some other part which helps - I think that's incredibly likely.

For me, now, while I will still continue to stare at the image every day for a little while, I'm more interested in where the things are found 'in the wild' - where the Feds are getting them from. I think there could be something about that location that could prove interesting indeed. Not only that, but it would also give us more Probes to, uh, probe.

I also quite agree.

While the graphic does (to me) look incredibly like a projection related to celestial navigation, I have given up this idea. For this to be so, there would have to be a planet surface upon which to navigate. And all I can see as a clue there is Merope 5c, based upon the actions of the UA and UP. And I do not believe that a celestial navigation system (as we use it on earth) can be used in space or off a planet surface without some bedrock transpositions of the fundamentals of the system. And this does not exist.

Plus, as I recall there was a statement that both the UA and UP were "space related" objects? Doesn't seem to point to such a surface based interpretation.

A form of a logic puzzle does seem quite possible. But I feel this is something that may require a decent level of familiarity with the surrounding lore and history of related events, something I fall far short on presently.

The search for "wild" UP does lure me, however. Something I will probably be poking around with in the near term.

 

[Erid]

I'll highlight the important bit;

''No definitive answers have been found, but some are speculating this is a key of some sort''


So yes, Frontier have leaned into the 'Key' idea. But two thirds of the sentence state ''no definitive answers'' and ''speculating''.

If you want me to think it's a decoder then show me evidence of it having decoded something. Until then it is logical to not jump to that conclusion.

28/07/2016, 3:38 PM

"green key" with 34;49;97 RGB
(x;y;z) in three dimensional Cartesian coordinate
(31.5; 55.2) in spherical
31.5 + 180 = 211.5
55.2 + 180 = 235.2

yeap its useless

 

[crushdepth]

But you're proving my point. Because there isn't a scale we can use math, maps, pictures, and other ideas to force logic till some kind of answer shows up. Instead of treating it as a map, we should be deciphering something that concludes its a map. We are still working off of theory instead of something concrete.

Remember back to logic class. You can't use an assumption to prove an assumption. That doesn't work. If you assume its a map and start logic around that assumption, yes you will come back to its a map. because you based all your logic on the original assumption. The answer will still be wrong. Until there is a reference AND a scale, treating it as a map is useless, and a waste of time. It could be a map, or a vector, but we can't work with it! Find the scale first. All we have right now are various shapes associated with quadrants of a circle and a possible binary number. Focus on those.

We might be staring at a test pattern. We assume its a signal because thus far it's always the same. Maybe we'll get a different result, under a different set of conditions.

 

[Kerrec Snowmane]

You're still starting at a dangerous place. The UP isn't the whole puzzle of what's going on with this Alien(?) communication attempts. The UA used morse code as a mediator for what it was seeing and communicating that to us. Testing confirmed it quickly. There's no reason that these things can't give us enough information to get a clear conclusion. It might point to somewhere, but we aren't there -yet-. If we get there at all. There's something much simpler right in front of us.

When it comes to simple maps, in space, positions of stars are universal. 4 grouping of stars 90 degrees from each other will only look a certain way from a single point (Not a chance that's what's happening, is there? Radial line is the only hiccup here. So probably not. ). Like our constellations from earth. If you move away from earth the constellations won't look right or appear at all. On a planet, really obvious landmarks are used. Canyons, mountains, craters, things with very unique shapes that can't be confused. There's plenty of ways to make a map without any use of language.

We need to focus on what's testable, cause a circle or sphere will fit anything in space. What can we use in the image to test, get, or convert information? Until something from the UA or UP says the image is to be used as a map, we shouldn't treat it as a map.

You fail to account for time. Use a "recognizable" landmark on a planet, and when your intelligent species finally gets the message sometime in the future, your landmark might not be there. A prominent crater? Smashed and replaced with a bigger crater. A mountain range? Gone because of erosion, impact, tectonic shifts, earthquakes. Canyons are quickly eroded by liquids.

Try it:

Humanity buried a canister on Earth at a specific location, for a specific reason. We beamed out information in space to invite aliens to visit us. The information you beam out in space includes the location of the canister (not just earth) because you have no idea if humans will still be on Earth by the time aliens get here. The canister contains our history, our philosophy, our greatest works. We want it to be found.

Make a map, using no human conventions. Assume the way the information was beamed out/sent out leads aliens to Earth. Your message is purposely to guide them to the canister in case we're not around anymore.

Good luck referencing something that might be gone 10000 years from now. Great Canyon? Gone, eroded, flooded, filled by future humans. Mount Everest? Might not be the tallest mountain in the future. Might not even be there at all. Draw the shape of a continent? Ohh, the ice at the poles melted. The continents you know today don't look at all like the continents you will find in the future. Or the planet is covered in ice. Same difference. Or Earth lost all it's water, and looks like Mars. Covered in shifting sand dunes.

Go ahead, make a map the way you describe it must be done "to be clear".

 

[karantza]

So the more I think about this, the more I'm convincing myself that this is a musical puzzle. MB has said that they came up with the general idea (motivation, meaning, etc), and then let the sound team go crazy with the actual puzzle, so I'm guessing the solution to this puzzle is going to come from thinking less like a Thargoid and more like a sound engineer. I don't think that there's any additional detail we're supposed to pull out of the message, and I don't think it's a physical map. Nothing in here is accurate enough to pull coordinates out of to isolate anything on the surface of a planet or a system in the galaxy. Unless it decodes something into numeric coordinates, I'm willing to bet that (like the UA) this mystery isn't about going somewhere within the game, it's about revealing something from what we already have. Some text, or an image. Also I like puns, and "key" referring to a musical key is too good to ignore.

With all that in mind, what's a circle that pops up in music? The circle of fifths. Basically, it's a diagram that relates musical keys to one another. It lays out 12 keys along a circle, with three of them overlapping (because they're enharmonic). It turns out if you align this so that C (the zero point of the circle) lines up with the line in the UP diagram, the overlapping section of the circle lines up with the enharmonic keys. Does that mean something? Dunno yet. It just means that the extra line covers the quarter of the circle opposite the top, which on its own isn't particularly noteworthy.

If you plot the howls from the probe on the circle of fifths aligned this way, you have something that bounces around the lower two quadrants. The first howl is GAEDGE, which makes a neat little symmetric pattern I suppose:

I was thinking that perhaps which quadrant the notes ended up in would be relevant, perhaps drawing a shape or stringing together those binary values into something meaningful. 001 100 100 100 001 001? Probably not, because with just four quadrants you don't have all possible 3-bit binary sequences, so you couldn't encode a message with it.

So yeah I have no idea if this can be used to mean anything. I was hoping to see some more obvious patterns across the diagram. It could be that we don't have the right source music? The trumpet sounds in the UP recording are just alternating back and forth by a fifth, occasionally going up a half step. (So it starts with B-F-B-F etc, then C-G-C-G, and so on) so that doesn't make a particularly interesting pattern here either. I'm not aware of any other musically rich sound that we've run across that could be encoded information.

In any case, I hope that sharing this might at least encourage everyone to think further outside the box! MB did say that a lot of our assumptions were wrong, so I wanted to see if I could challenge as many of our assumptions as possible and think like the puzzle designers (english sound/music nerds). I still believe that the answer to this puzzle lies in information we already have, and that it doesn't have to do with scouring the surface of any desolate moons or trying to pick out precise angles from this diagram. It's gotta be something simpler that we're just not seeing yet. I'll keep poking around with musical ideas. Good luck cmdrs!

 

[rge]

So here is yet another theory.
I don't think is is convenient for everything, some parts do not fit very well, others do ...
I gave up on this for now, but maybe someone might get another idea out of that.

Lets start with the upper quadrants:

The 2 smaller Arcs represent orbit lines, leading to the 2nd Planet in the system (Merope 2).
The arc on the upper left leads to the first planet orbiting Merope 2 = Merope 2A.
The assumption the system is Merope comes from the UP/UA pointing to that system.


Next step, a simplified overview with orbit lines and axial tilt:

Now a zoomed view of the left side, trying to interpret the lower quadrants:

The "red" line is Merope's ecliptic plane = 0°.
The "cyan" line is Meropes orbital plane with the orbital inclination of 0.54°. This is the plane on which Merope 2 orbits Merope.
With this we can draw in the axial tilt of Merope 2A = -151.14° = blue arc + blue line inside the sphere.
The blue line (barely visible in the image) leading from the center to the "North Pole" looks like the lower right quadrant of the UP Image. And this is the biggest flaw in this theory ... it does not really fit.

Anyway ... the 2 lines in the lower left, could represent the axial tilt of Merope 2A.
The orbital inclination ("green" line) is 0.
The arc between the 2 lines in the UP image is around 29-30°.

Last but not least, I thought as well, the symbols in the corners are binary. And represent PI rounded.
Might be a big coincidence, but Merope 2A's Orbital Eccentricity is 0 ... which results in a perfect circle. Which could be hinted by the number PI.


As I said, this theory has some flaws.
But I have to disagree with people saying: Aliens would not use base 10 numbers.
Neither would they use morse code to paint some space ships.

Just wanted to post it here, so the work was not useless all the way

 

[Menenhetet]

I'm predicting a rather grand development occurring right around August 9th, perhaps an actual sighting of the makers of these strange devices.... For some reason it just seems right to make this prediction for a time centering around the 9th

 

[Allant Doran]

"green key" with 34;49;97 RGB
(x;y;z) in three dimensional Cartesian coordinate
(31.5; 55.2) in spherical
31.5 + 180 = 211.5
55.2 + 180 = 235.2

yeap its useless

But then what does this actually tell us about the information the image is giving us? What does the Image, which was the subject of my comment, decode given this info?

From the looks of things you decoded the green colour of the 'key' text, not the UP image.

 

[Nagual]

I've been pondering if we the players have done things in an order FDev didn't expect. I wonder if the original idea of them was to point towards MC5 simply because it had barnacles on it. We find the Artefacts pointing towards Merope and nearby [which is what we are looking for now] there well may have been Probes. We's have found a probe and took it there and gone oo look Barnacles.

But my heads been fuzzy for days and probably have forgotten something that makes the above complete balderdash.

 

[aelemental]

Im sorry but i have to shar my opinion, the UA and UP already point at Merope, and people have been there before for the barnacles .. Im pretty sure people would have already found whatever was on the surface by now. Also considering FD knew we knew about Merope, as a designer myself, i would have assumed people might just stumble upon it and destroy all the audio mistery, so i would never just put it there on the surface.
In case it does point to a point on the surface, IMHO, it will be a place where you need to do something else (ie. scan the probe or something), rather than a POI per se.
Besides, im pretty convinced its not on the surface for those same reasons, putting it on the surface of an unknown planet is one think, but on Merope, a one instance, and possibly the most crowded area of space these days would be too dangerous for teh puzzle.
And one more thing, the fact that is all one instance really suggest this puzzles solution might not be executable by one person ...
..Just thoughts, sorry their constructiveness is relative, but i wanted to share my opinion: its in space in a planet orbit (comm chatter suggesting orbital testing and mr. Brookes suggesting they are space related, etc ..)

One more thought, could the UPs be the ones waking up the barnacles ? as in the UAs have gathered information about locations and ships, and than the UPs triggered the barnacle growth, just wondering if those NPCs talking about orbital testing have actually done some, and those resulted in the existintg barnacles growing, perhaps in this case if we do whatever the NPCs did we can grow more ?
(which we might do to get more meta-alloys, but will cost us dearly the day the aliens arrive : )

Random thoughts i know, but 10 days later is all i have lol ..?!

GL!!

 

[rge]

I've been pondering if we the players have done things in an order FDev didn't expect. I wonder if the original idea of them was to point towards MC5 simply because it had barnacles on it. We find the Artefacts pointing towards Merope and nearby [which is what we are looking for now] there well may have been Probes. We's have found a probe and took it there and gone oo look Barnacles.

But my heads been fuzzy for days and probably have forgotten something that makes the above complete balderdash.

This is what I thought! Bad timing of doom. Tinfoiling the sh... out of an already and accidentally solved mystery. Would be sad tho ...

 

[Nagual]

This is what I thought! Bad timing of doom. Tinfoiling the sh... out of an already and accidentally solved mystery. Would be sad tho ...

Even if that was the case, it's far far from solved.

 

[DialBforBiscuit]

You fail to account for time. Use a "recognizable" landmark on a planet, and when your intelligent species finally gets the message sometime in the future, your landmark might not be there. A prominent crater? Smashed and replaced with a bigger crater. A mountain range? Gone because of erosion, impact, tectonic shifts, earthquakes. Canyons are quickly eroded by liquids.

Try it:

Humanity buried a canister on Earth at a specific location, for a specific reason. We beamed out information in space to invite aliens to visit us. The information you beam out in space includes the location of the canister (not just earth) because you have no idea if humans will still be on Earth by the time aliens get here. The canister contains our history, our philosophy, our greatest works. We want it to be found.

Make a map, using no human conventions. Assume the way the information was beamed out/sent out leads aliens to Earth. Your message is purposely to guide them to the canister in case we're not around anymore.

Good luck referencing something that might be gone 10000 years from now. Great Canyon? Gone, eroded, flooded, filled by future humans. Mount Everest? Might not be the tallest mountain in the future. Might not even be there at all. Draw the shape of a continent? Ohh, the ice at the poles melted. The continents you know today don't look at all like the continents you will find in the future. Or the planet is covered in ice. Same difference. Or Earth lost all it's water, and looks like Mars. Covered in shifting sand dunes.

Go ahead, make a map the way you describe it must be done "to be clear".

Even with the use of language, a map will never be relevant out of its time. Planets change shape, stars explode, meteors, black holes, stuff like you say. With time all maps become irrelevant because the reference and/or scale is lost. Your logic makes the image being a map seem more unlikely. Because even something detailed is pointless if a rock floating through space will mess it up after a couple thousand years. So why bother making a map when you can get a message across?

If we want a canister to be found, put a blinky light on it or make it project a signal. The exact same thing UAs do, creating USSs. If you want someone to find the canister then put the canister where its easy to find. If its too big to place in space, then send out something that just POINTS to it and use the same signal technology to track your canister when close to it. Seriously, if the UAs, and UPs are able to be picked up a hundred ls away, making a larger object emit a stronger signal shouldn't be a problem. So pointing to the planet would be enough. No map or language needed.

I also don't want to create a map, because there's a puzzle to be solved. Until it is solved, there's no map or a need for one. And circling around why a map is or isn't relevant is wasting more time we could be using to solve this riddle.

 

[CFF]

I've genuinely given up on trying to interpret this diagram as anything specifically related to a location for now.

For similar-ish reasons to Domm earlier, but not because we don't have a good enough 'version' of it.

I don't think we need a better version of it; but I also don't think the angles are important either - it looks like a trigonometric puzzle, but it's not IMHO - it's a logic puzzle and when the correct interpretation comes along, it'll be obvious. In terms of measurements, although I was right there with the on-screen protractors - it just doesn't seem right. And even if you can come up with some angles (bearing in mind someone else will come up with different angles too!) there's no satisfying way to interpret them that isn't the equivalent of looking at Varatian Tea Leaves and thinking you're going to win the lottery.

That doesn't mean, however, that I don't think there's something we're missing - some other part which helps - I think that's incredibly likely.

For me, now, while I will still continue to stare at the image every day for a little while, I'm more interested in where the things are found 'in the wild' - where the Feds are getting them from. I think there could be something about that location that could prove interesting indeed. Not only that, but it would also give us more Probes to, uh, probe.

The only issue I have with this is that the bottom right quadrant has a line that is definitely not dividing that area into two equal parts. It's hard to argue that the line itself emanating from the center is the extent of the logical puzzle - if it was, why not draw it at 45 degrees to the horizontal? Maybe we can't say exactly what angle it is, but we can be pretty certain it's not a 45 degree angle to the horizontal. So if not an angle, then the interpretation must be something to do with two unequal parts of that quadrant. But that seems like a strange interpretation - why not make them demonstrably unequal and draw it 2/3rds of the way from the horizontal? Likewise, the bottom left quadrant has two lines that are clearly not dividing the span into thirds - it's a few degrees off to the point where it's clear it's not thirds.

If you look at the graphics on the rest of the puzzle, they clearly have an 'accuracy' that has a good degree of fidelity. The top left arc stops pretty much exactly at the 90 degree points. The lines on the sphere are at perfect distances. It just doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that the angle mean to guide is in a general direction and to a general place with an accuracy fine enough to not leave us with a huge search area.