UNKNOWN ARTIFACT: Signal Fomat Decrypted?

Iori

Iori
jspoto said:
Everyone -

We have a possible breakthrough regarding the message format from Unknown Artifacts... please see the reddit thread here!
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/34wdza/unknown_artifact_decryption_breakthrough/

63 Bits...

Although I've yet to solve this mystery, I think I've figured out how to decrypt the artifact signals, and the message packet format.

Looking at the bit transcriptions on the other thread, something immediately jumped out at me. Take the following transmit burst:

Code: 
    011        
    100100 
    0110101
    0100100
    1001011
    1100110
    1010010
    1010110
    0011001
    0110011
    0110110

Not all the transmission bursts have this exact format, but I'll assume this is the most correct at present (I'll explain why later). I believe that people have correctly identified the first part of the message as a header -- let's look at that:

Code: 
011        
100100

Translated into decimal, those are

Code: 
3
36

Hmm... not terribly useful at a glance. But let's examine the rest further. The most common case of what follows involves a series of nine 7-bit sub-bursts, which is what I believe can be proven to be a correctly transcribed message. Let's count the total bits:

Code: 
7 x 9 = 63

**And there it is. 36=63 right in the header!!!** I appears that the actual decimal is reverse encoded by order of magnitude -- just reverse the numbers!

Additionally, 63 = 3 x 21, which together with the initial header digit (3) would appear an immediate indicator that the message is in fact an encoded 3-space coordinate value

Given this, here is the complete data, with each 7-bit value raw converted, followed by the reverse:

Code: 
    011          3                 3
    100100       36                63
    
    0110101      53                35
    0100100      36                63
    1001011      75                57
    
    1100110      102               201
    1010010      82                28
    1010110      86                68
    
    0011001      25                52
    0110011      51                15
    0110110      54                45

One question is whether the individual numbers above should be left as individual numbers, or taken as a whole. If left as individuals, then one question is whether, like their digits, each sequence of 3x7 bits is also reverse encoded.

Alternatively, here it is decoded, with each set of 21 bits taken together:

Code: 
    011                3                 3
    100100             36                63  

    0110101            873035            530378
    0100100
    1001011
    
    1100110            1681750           0571861
    1010010
    1010110
    
    0011001            416182            281614
    0110011
    0110110

This assumes non-signed numbers, which may not be useful. Instead, we may need to play with the first or last bits as sign bits, making each digit 20 bits long + sign. Also, the values are rather large (if they in fact represent coordinates in LY) so perhaps the last digit (or more) are fractional?

I haven't gotten that far yet myself, I got too excited and get this online... **And that's why I'm posting, because we'll get there faster all working together!**

* *Important: A final bit of business, the header format should allow us to go back into the audio samples, and correctly retrieve the necessary contents -- I noticed that some bursts indicated 63 bits when in fact fewer were transcribed. If all of this is correct, we should be able to verify the number of message bits from the header.*
Click to expand...

We all know what "3" means.

[video=youtube;7tWPYwK0L7I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tWPYwK0L7I[/video]
 

Tiamat

Tiamat
Baleur said:
Have you tried anything other than English? Korean (which is a highly mathematical written language) or Chinese for example? (since you mentioned special characters and seemingly garbage data, if it wasnt encoded into romanic characters, it may make more sense)
Click to expand...

As they are alien artifacts I would have thought most Earth-based concepts such as languages were out. Binary (on/off, dark/light) would be universal enough to fit though. If the decoded messages are coordinates I doubt Sol would be 0,0,0 and Sag-A would be a better candidate for zero.

Somebody on the Reddit thread makes a good point. Do all of the artifacts all emit the same exact audio in the same areas? I think we need numerous recordings and the coordinates they were captured at to analyse.
 

xyphic

X
digitalscream said:
While those things are true...as I said previously, if it's a direct communication attempt then any aliens within 1350 light years would almost certainly have received transmissions based on the EM signals blasted out by Earth from the mid-20th century onwards; that puts Morse and ASCII (or other encodings) back on the table.
Click to expand...
Sure, but if it's a direct communication attempt, why not just talk to us?
 

jspoto

J
Hey guys, NEW information here: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/34wdza/unknown_artifact_decryption_breakthrough/

I've changed my hypothesis a bit... In short: I've re-translated the binary from the audio samples myself, and in the new data the header appears to change between messages -- mine look like messages #3 and #4.

Still lots of work to do, figuring out the message "payload" :p

Here are the bottom line results:

Code: 
011         3       3     <- id?
100100      36      63    <- message length?


0010010     18      81      
1001011     75      57      
0100101     37      73      


0110011     51      15
1101010     106?    601?
0011010     26      62


1001010     74      47
0110101     53      35
0110110     54      45






00100       4       4     <- id?
100100      36      63    <- message length?


0110101     53      35
0100100     36      63
1001011     75      57


1100110     102     201
1010010     82      28
1010110     86      68


0011001     25      52
0110011     51      15
0110110     54      45    <- hmmm.. repeats on both.  Significant?
 
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Inhumierer

Inhumierer
Yes, exactly what was mentioned before. The transmission is very unlikely to be ASCII or any other coding in any human language or character set. And a byte must not consist of 8 bits, in fact some early human computers used 6 or 7 bits per byte.
Numbers in base 10 are very unlikely, too.
Binary is valid, for sure. Parity information to ensure correct transmission is valid, too.

If the numbers are coordinates, the aliens (or whoever made this transmission) must know about the human coordinate system - karthesian coordinates in 1/32 Ly, origin Sol at (0/0/0). So it may be a trap...
 

Salvatory

S
simulacrae said:
After seeing these numbers I decided to do a little digging ...

It turns out that the Thargoids made contact with humans much earlier than previously thought. Scholars have long thought that the “Ships of Tarshish” mentioned in the bible were infact -
Thargoid scout ships !

The first clue for this was the number 3 in binary which correlates to the visits every 3 years by the ships of Tarshish (2 Chronicles 9:21). It is at this time in human history when protection against the “'Evil Eye” is first documented. One of the many methods of protecting against the Evil Eye was the construction of Magic Squares.

While we can't be sure that the association of the Evil Eye and dealing with Thargoid artifacts is accurate – it is possible that the deleterious effects of the artifacts was interpreted as having been cursed with the Evil Eye. Hence of course 36 … the 1-36 magic square which when summed horizontally or vertically is 6x111 or 666. Need I say more …. ok I will.

The Breastplate of Aaron (Exod xxviii 17-20) Is a magical square of precious stones which were “no doubt, intended to avert the attacks of the evil spirits from the high priest” (Budge, Amulets and Talismans 1961:327) On this particular talisman is a stone of Tarshish. Each of the stones was also inscribed with one of the 12 tribes – it is believed that the stone of Tarshish was inscribed with that of Asher. Asher was one of the tribes chosen to stand on Mount Ebal and pronounce curses (Deuteronomy 27:13) such as:

Cursed is the man who leads the blind astry on the road ... (Deuteronomy 27:18)
Click to expand...

So maybe we should convert to ascii and then into hebrew and then into gematria to find the permutations of possible messages.
 

SteveLaw

SteveLaw
Salvatory said:
So maybe we should convert to ascii and then into hebrew and then into gematria to find the permutations of possible messages.
Click to expand...

At this point I have lost all sense of irony. Is this serious? I think the UA is making more sense to me than most of these theories. Let's just take a step back shall we? Wait for the story to develop.
 
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Zenith

Zenith
Toumal said:
Hardly so. There's even more elaborate examples, have you heard of the Archer Easter Egg Hunt? http://www.reddit.com/r/ArcherFX/comments/30yre4/archer_super_easter_egg_hunt_arg_writeup_and/
Click to expand...

As I said in the other large thread, if you've played the mobile ARG "Ingress" and have any interest in the back-story, you'll have come across puzzles, ciphers, substitution codes, ROT13 and various sound and images requiring manipulation to extract the information.
This is nowhere near that level of complexity, but there is complexity in the sounds the UA makes. Perhaps I'm attaching too much significance, but the sounds are too structured to be ignored as background noise.
 

aws357

A
I ran a custom python code on the binary matrix, and obtain a serie of three numbers decimals. Wondering if it could be ascii, this is what I get after conversion.

Code: 
T#_hE_A___ns
#|"||r|__{\ç
+|#||§|_|)ç|
=|__#i@_/s/#
'd##|#|/!/_?
<<#$|_|____|
$#%##ù##?#&#
+###[#_\#-{"

Seeing a pattern, I ran another pythons script to clean all the gibberish.

Code: 
  _  _ ___  
 | || |__ \ 
 | || |_ ) |
 |__   _/ / 
    | |/ /_ 
    |_|____|

Mmmmmh. Still does not make any sense at all...
 
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Genar-Hofoen

Genar-Hofoen
Ask yourselves "IF an insectoid race (such as the Thargoids) were to evolve enough to develop their own mathematics, what would their natural choice of numerical base be?"

Personally, I'd answer "Insectoid infers they have six limbs. It may be a good assumption that they may use base 6 as their numerical base."

Or perhaps they use base 12 (assuming two appendages per limb).

Or perhaps they use base 18 (assuming 3 appendages per limb).

So perhaps this data you think you've collected is encoded using a base divisible by 6, if that makes any sense.

Or it could be FDEV just made the alien artefact sound kind of cool, and are all laughing at us. But that's just cynical old me talking ;)
 

khaitom

K
Frontier did NOT say there was a message in the sounds. MB said "Have you listened to them?" The question I'd like answered is; Does the sound change under any particular circumstances?

MB might just have been pointing out that they sound really freaky.
 
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Pequi

P
As some mentioned above, if this is alien code, all human codes are rubbish. Even the "lightyear" must thrown away. Just pure mathematics and common universal physics are allowed. And if you think of a foreign, alien contact trial. There have to be worked out a translation code before, like the stone of rosetta or the like. I doubt, FD made such a huge attempt to please some cipher-nerds. Maybe, the message is much easier to decrypt, than some think of.
 
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