Right 4th thread the Fantastic Four.
This has discussed at length but perhaps a fresh perspective may help reveal something.
1. A free floating UA scans your ship when you approach within 1KM of it. From my previous observations of a jettisoned UA they immediately scan you as they are less than 1KM.
2. The UA is a VERY small object just a bit larger than a human being. I practically had it tapping against the cockpit viewscreen and could easily notice the size difference with the pilot (Asp Explorer)
5. The UA is unshielded or presents no obvious defensive system.
4. The UA seems to emit a variety of signals/sounds 1. a rumble, 2. a "positive" tone, 3. a "negative" tone, 4. the morse sound and. 5. a slimy zipper sound almost like an alien bud opening.
5. The UA glows at regular intervals while performing its function.
Couple of things here... everything about the UA seems binary.... The UA appears to either be lit up or dormant, it transmits what I would call a "positive" tone which I believe some call the howl, and a "negative tone the honk, and finally morse can be seen as a binary response dot vs dash much like a 1 vs 0.
After staring at the thing for about 30+ minutes this seems to be the programming:
0. Rumble.... Rumble.... (standby mode)
1. Positive or Negative signal (always alternating)
2. Light up (from back to forward filling in the gaps almost like a liquid gauge filling itself up)
3. Slimy zipper sound winding up
4. Morse transmission
5. Slimy zipper sound winding down
6. Lights out.
The program then repeats but with the opposite starting signal.
Everything about this looks to me like a radio powering up and then going offline and as I mentioned before makes me think that if an external stimulus is to solve or access the UA's next programming it may have to be done during the powered up state. I almost feel like a ham radio operator may be what is needed to get this case cracked. The other thing that seems important is the faint but definite "slimy zipper sound" throughout the transmission. The sound is there, faint almost too high of a frequency to make anything out of it but it is definitely there almost like an organic power source... Perhaps if there is a way to disrupt the signal or transmission mid sentence by messing with the power source the UA may go into some sort of self diagnostic mode and start spitting out different transmissions... ideally a log of activities since it became operational which could be traced back to the source.... who knows. One thing is for sure there is a lot of detail in this object and everything seems to indicate that any of it is no accident and shouldn't be treated as meaningless fluff.
And...
One thing I forgot to mention about the UA was the background whirring/whizzing that is constant that seems to go with the cloud of zippying particles. That sound itself reminds me of the episode of Star Trek (The Original Series) when captain Kirk meets the race of sped up beings who lived way too fast to be perceptible by human senses except for one odd sound. In one scene Spock takes a regular conversation / event and starts speeding it up exponentially until it sounds almost like the whirring/whizzing background sound the UA makes.
The "slimy zipper sound(TM)" (I'll claim that term though it sounds gross)... honestly sounds like some sort of alien egg hatching, however what I noticed last night that I had never noticed before, is that when that happens it doesn't stop a high pitched whizz is still audible throughout the whole transmission and then it shuts down... If I was to visualize what that looks like I'd say almost like an alien flower (think Super Mario) opening and then closing....
The research.... continues