UNKNOWN ARTIFACT: Signal Fomat Decrypted?

Is the sound variation due to different UAs or to the UAs being in different places?

It'd be worth recording one and then jumping a 1000ly and recording the same UA again.
Maybe the signal is like a homing beacon.

I have to say I'm struggling to hear anything that is clearly binary.
 
Clearly a homing beacon, I hope you didn't bring it back to inhabited space - they'll come looking for it !! and if it's a homing beacon it'll be broadcasting it's current location - so I concur with Mad Dog

My idea is that the pattern in the sounds relates to stars/black holes/landmarks and the distances between them - denoting a straight line for one co-ordinate for each phrase in the "message" to be able to identify a point in space.
 
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I thnk the sound is just something that sounds 'Alienish', nothing more to it.

If anything needs to be worked out, it will be through a method that is accesible to the masses, otherwise it would induce whining from the crowds that dont have the required knowledge.

I fear that is the route you have to go down when you make a game that appeals to a mass audience.
 
(1) Is the sound variation due to different UAs or to the UAs being in different places?

It'd be worth recording one and then jumping a 1000ly and recording the same UA again.
Maybe the signal is like a homing beacon.

(2) I have to say I'm struggling to hear anything that is clearly binary.

(1) - All the recordings we have are by me, dropping it in the same place. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to get on this again for a few days - sorry, guys. Also, I'm in a Vulture so a quick 1000ly dash isn't exactly on the cards ;)

(2) - There are two distinct tones in groups of 7 - one low, one high (which we've interpreted as 0 and 1 respectively). You can hear it at normal speed, but it's far easier (and quicker) if you speed it up 2-4 times.

For those of you talking about number bases, using octal etc - I can't see that's any more than an irrelevant distraction. 4 apples is 4 apples in any base - it's just a representation of a real-world number. As it is, we're already operating on the assumption of base 2; no need to convert to another base unless it's on the way to something else (eg 7-bit ASCII).

The header discovery is a good one. If it does indeed indicate a sequence, then that's awesome progress; it also means that we're on the right track. I'll do some more digging on the other files...
 
Hello there

Just FYI, it may not be a homing signal or an S.O.S.

It could be a warning...

remember those leathery egg shaped objects?

I say we just ignore it and carry on RES site farming.

Discretion is the better part of valour and all that.

Rgds

LoK
 
Can somebody check these at some point for me? I've been through all the sequences we have (ignoring the first one from the video, which is only a partial sequence). The unknown_artefact_audio_long.mp3 is the first one, then UA 1..5.mp3.


011
100100
0010010
1001011
0100101
0110011
1101010
0011010
100101
0110101
0110110

00100
100100
0110101
0100100
1001011
1100110
1010010
1010110
0011001
0110011
0110110




010011
0101011
1011001
0100110
0100101
1001010
1001001
0101011
001001
1100100
1010110

010
11011
100100
011011
110010
010110
010011
100110
0110101
0101100
0110010
1100110

01100
101001
0101100
0011011
1011001
0010010
0010100
0100110
011001
1001011
1010110

00110
0011001
001100
0011010
1010110
0010011
0110110
1001101
1001100
1001011
101001

01101
011010
010101
0101011
1001001
0110010
1010110
101010
0110011
0101001
1101001

I'm not convinced about my results, because there are an awful lot of 6-bit numbers there. However, if we assume that the first entry in any sequence is the header...we have 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, 13 and 19. That means I either missed the first entry off when I recorded a couple of them (unlikely, given that all except one have the same number of entries), or it means we have at least 19 sequences to record.
 
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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...

42... well all we need to do now is look for the restaurant at the end of the universe :p

Slopes off to get atlas :rolleyes:
 
Can somebody check these at some point for me? I've been through all the sequences we have (ignoring the first one from the video, which is only a partial sequence). The unknown_artefact_audio_long.mp3 is the first one, then UA 1..5.mp3.


011
100100
0010010
1001011
0100101
0110011
1101010
0011010
100101
0110101
0110110

00100
100100
0110101
0100100
1001011
1100110
1010010
1010110
0011001
0110011
0110110




010011
0101011
1011001
0100110
0100101
1001010
1001001
0101011
001001
1100100
1010110

010
11011
100100
011011
110010
010110
010011
100110
0110101
0101100
0110010
1100110

01100
101001
0101100
0011011
1011001
0010010
0010100
0100110
011001
1001011
1010110

00110
0011001
001100
0011010
1010110
0010011
0110110
1001101
1001100
1001011
101001

01101
011010
010101
0101011
1001001
0110010
1010110
101010
0110011
0101001
1101001

I'm not convinced about my results, because there are an awful lot of 6-bit numbers there. However, if we assume that the first entry in any sequence is the header...we have 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, 13 and 19. That means I either missed the first entry off when I recorded a couple of them (unlikely, given that all except one have the same number of entries), or it means we have at least 19 sequences to record.

That's the coordinates for the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location, mystery solved
 
Can someone link me to the original audio? I'd rather start from scratch and check it out myself.
Edit: Nevermind, I found it on the Reddit page, sorry. :)

FRONTIER, can you PLEASE fix the forums so line breaks WORK?
I've noticed this too. For me line breaks format correctly in all browsers (Opera, Firefox, Google) except IE. Have you tried using a different browser?
 
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Can someone link me to the original audio? I'd rather start from scratch and check it out myself.


I've noticed this too. For me line breaks format correctly in all browsers (Opera, Firefox, Google) except IE. Have you tried using a different browser?

It's all on my server:

http://www.digitalscream.org.uk/audio

The first one (unknown_artifact_audio.mp3) is just the audio from my video that PC Gamer picked up - it's useless, because I recorded it before I realised that we needed the extended sequence; therefore, it's only a partial with five entries. The others are more complete.
 
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