Posted by
kdawson
on from the paging-frank-shoemaker-white-courtesy-telephone-please dept.
Saiyine sends word that the
mysterious code received at Fermilab, which we discussed last Friday, has been mostlydecoded, inside of two days, by two separate people. The poster at the second link seems to have constructed a more complete rationale for the message.
The top floor of Wilson Hall has a lounge area and a lots of windows and it's where they take visitors for the view. You can however get to the floor above that but it's all concrete and DANGER signs, it is very noisy though: A clue!
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
adam
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
okay, now i'm beginning to become obsessed here, haha. My lack of mathematical background precludes me from decoding the stanzas (2 of 3 already done, and "peer reviewed").. but the psychological clues feel more within my grasp. If we examine the explanation at the first link on the story...
With my initial interpretation of the top part of the coded message I got the following output:
(021) FRANK@SHOEMAKER@WOULD@CAMV@FTVTCAPSBC The second link does a better job explaining, but basically one of the "words" in ternary was "wrapped" and due to the lack of hyphen, this was misintrepreted by both crackers. What I find interesting is not that once you actually solve the stanza, you get "FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE," but rather that CALL THIS NOISE was the obscured part of the message. The signal that was hidden amongst the "noise" of a missing hyphen. The first cracker (John) speculates that he missed an indentation that indicates this (although he permits the possibility that it may be random), but I think there was no indentation, and the author wanted you to see the significance of this hidden word phrase (regarding "NOISE").
Again, just as I believe "BASSE" is significant because it is misspelled (when nothing else is), I believe this wrapped word is significant (when no other words are wrapped). It's possible the encoder did this just to make things a bit harder, but if you look at the fact that it happens exactly at the part of the sentence referring to "noise," I believe you must be more inclined to lend it significance.
Regarding BASSE, again, I am not a mathematician or a cracker, so I may be at a strong disadvantage here. If the significance of BASSE is taking the "extra" S and incorporating it into the middle stanza, I will be of little help to this collective effort. That said, if we attack the problem from a psychological/wordclue aspect... Googling "basse" doesn't help much, but google: fermilab basse...and the second link talks about Wilson Hall, and the Beauvais Catherdral, "occupied by the Romanesque church known as the Basse oeuvre," This page also talks about the fermilab logo, so I spent a while thinking that logo might have sixteen points, or sixteen intersections, etc.. nothing. But if we google image search "wilson hall fermilab" -- images of wilsonhall seem to show that it has sixteen stories when I count them. A quick googling reveals, "The 16-story Robert Wilson Hall is named after Fermilab's first director and was inspired by a French Gothic cathedral" --the cathedral occupied by the Basse Oeuvre-- Coincidence?
In summary, BASSE SIXTEEN is (possibly) a sixteen story Fermilab building, named Wilson Hall. The significance of "NOISE" is still lost on me, and I believe the middle stanza should help with forward momentum. I am now going to review both explanations linked from the/. summary and attempt to parse something from the hexidecimal decoding(s) of the middle stanza.
Perhaps more now than ever I wish/, posts could be edited, as I am *NOT* done with this, but I want to post it now so others can expand on my thoughts, or perhaps save me from heading down some pointless passageways of reasoning. Further posts to come. Oh, also, if you attempt to edit your previewed post more than three times, slashdot barfs on you and you have to re-write it. Could have saved 10 mins had I known that:(
-- I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Many eyes make all bugs shallow
by
CarpetShark
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Yes, and if anyone needed proof that open source is better than closed source for finding bugs or fixing security vulnerabilities, this is yet more evidence.
Re:Many eyes make all bugs shallow
by
SQLGuru
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I would suspect that most here that are interested in this puzzle don't have any thoughts of open source vs closed source while they ponder a solution. Many (like myself) are some of the smartest people in their family and likely their circle of friends...and possibly even broader communities (not the Goatse guy, obviously). They seek a solution because it would provide further evidence of their mental superiority. It's a form of validation; much like responses and mods to your slashdot posts provide a form of validation. Everyone wants to be accepted, even those of the world that have been shunned by "normal" groups (these people are usually called Nerds, Dorks, Geeks, etc.)......this is just another way for these people to acheive it.
Layne
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
somersault
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I'm not a cryptographer, but maybe it relates to musical notes (on a bass line rather than the standard EADGBE?).. in fact "would call this noise" also could suggest something similar, that the guy wouldn't enjoy the song the notes make?:p
-- which is totally what she said
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
MoriaOrc
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Just to help you stay on track, a note about the odd line breaks from the link to the "thought process" from below:
The odd breaks occur because the way it's written is in a fixed-width row format. Each row contains an equal number of columns, and each column contains either a '|' or a ' ' (dash or space). The correct interpretation of the message removes the line breaks and translates the sentence as a single line.
The first stanza has 47 columns per row. The 5-6 and 6-7 breaks occur because the last column in line 5/6 is a '|' but the first column in line 6/7 is also a '|'.
The third stanza uses the same notation, but now each row consists of 85 columns. The 2-3 break has the same problem as in the first stanza, the row ran out of columns and the gap character had to be continued on the next row.
If you're looking for significance with those gaps, instead consider the number of columns per row, and the fact that both stanzas have 7 complete rows and an 8th partial row.
Misc numbers that may or may not be helpful:
25 columns in the last row of Stanza 1
21 columns in the last row of Stanza 3
Left Hander
by
FlatWhatson
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The message seems to have been written by a left-handed person. Analysis of the vertical lines in the two partially decrypted stanzas show a consistant skew a few degrees to the left which increases towards the right side of the page.
Another clue on the psych path to decoding the SEKRIT MSGS !?
-- BLAM!
Middle stanza not a key?
by
FalcDot
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Why would that middle stanza only be a mapping, used to decode those three items? There seems to be too much information for it to be just that, especially since you only need to decode 3 'letters'.
So why the rest of the key? Why are some hex numbers repeated?
Why does every hex number (that shows up) appear once, twice or three times? Again with the three, again with the ternary? *Three* stanzas, all in some form of base *three*?
Just wondering out loud, I couldn't really get far with this train of thought but maybe someone else will be able to hop on.
Re:Middle stanza not a key?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Middle stanza contains 2 lines with each 12 characters. Each of the characters appear not more than 3 times: B-1, C-1, D-2, E-3, F-3, 5-1, 8-1, 2-2, 6-3, 3-2, 7-1, 9-2, 4-1, 0-1. 'A' and '1' are not present at all, I am not sure if we are really looking at hex.
Instead, transcribing each character with there appearance number gives us: 311311323232 311222312233
looks somehow similar to the other two stanzas: 311 311 323 232 311 222 312 233
but i can't decode it.
final 3 digit could be something like S31, if 'S' remains plain text.
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
JoeKilner
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
My gut feeling was that it was a dig at Frank Shoemaker - i.e. Frank would miss the message in this because he would call it noise.
So, either a friend having a friendly jibe or a disgruntled ex-colleague lashing out (maybe at someone who told him that the "signal" he saw in some data was "just noise")?
But I think I am probably reading _way_ too much in to things here...
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
adam
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Expanding upon your "significance of 7 rows for both third and first stanza" theory, I immediately notice that the Wilson Hall building has 7 columns (count them: here and here. Your suggestion appears helpful.
If the orientation of the columns is rotated 90deg to make them rows, the stanzas may map to the columns in the building. If we assume the messages are significant, and the correlation to building "rows" is significant, and the left over "8th rows" from stanzas are significant.. we could derive all sorts of possibilities for the mapping of the remaining rows to a position in the building. Again, seeing how others here are much better at finding mathematically significant aspects than I am, I will throw this theory out and see if you or someone else can parse it.. because I believe the "25 columns in the last row of Stanza 1,
21 columns in the last row of Stanza 3" will need to be parsed somehow.
Also, speaking of my lack of math background-- can anyone post something useful for the second stanza? I know John and Geoff (linked crackers) have decoded the three character string below the second stanza, as being "508 (0Ã--1fc) or 2812 (0xafc)" but what about the second stanza itself? If it's base sixteen encoded can someone work on decoding it? We are really working with 2/3 of the available information here, and I think the remaining third will provide a lot of momentum.
also, as I expect this will continue long after this story is no longer at the top of the page, anyone who wants to collaborate via e-mail, may feel free to contact me. my email address is encoded as follows;)... myslashdotusernamewhichisfourcharacters.slashdot at gmail. Now I really wish I'd looked closer at the original story, instead of glancing and thinking, "wow, lots of math and the letter is probably a prank.. what else is there to read on slashdot today.."
-- I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
nacturation
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I think the noise refers to the many black dots found on the page itself. Just below the vertical bottom of the first section, if you scroll all the way to the right you'll see a cluster of three dots and, going down-left from there, another two dots, another two dots, etc.
Or look at the symbol section. You'll see the first symbol for 6 looks like a horizontal bar with a vertical hook and a dot under the bar. The second symbol for 6 has no dot. And to the right of the second symbol for 6 is a vertical cluster of three dots.
Maybe they're nothing, but I get the sneaking suspicion that it's the dots (noise) that's the real puzzle here. Potentially with the symbols indicating the relative geometric arrangement of the dots that then map back to the letters/numbers.
-- Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Message by time travel
by
dargaud
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
This reminds me of a few science fiction stories based on the hypothesis that you can transmit messages backwards in time, but that noise and causality acts against them being understood fully. One book, Timescape by Benford has the protagonist living in a world gone to ecological hell and he's trying to warn a young physicist in the early 50s.
The target receives messages on his lab equipment, but the funny thing is that messages that can potentially change the course of time are gibberish (because then the originator wouldn't have sent them) and the harmless ones go through just fine. It's an interesting idea. How can you transmit important information this way ?
When I saw the second paragraph, my first thought was to fire up Char Map.
Whereas other people kept thinking that the middle section was supposed to be substituting the hex numbers for the symbols above, I had to wonder if the symbols were trying to tell us something. After all, as was pretty clearly pointed out by the people who have solved paragraphs one and three, each section contains only five lines. (In fact, the middle paragraph was your clue to this one -- it was just obscured by the fact that it was in two different codes -- but still, only five lines).
Anyway, I realized that many of the symbols in the middle paragraph were in Charmap. AND each of these has a corresponding UTF code, which could be translated in to hex
For instance:
"Not Sign", U+00AC
"Inverted Exclamation Mark", U+00A1
"Greater Than Sign" (duh), U+003E
"Single Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark", U+203A (note in the code they are two different sizes)
"Greek Phi", U+03A6
(Unfortunately, slashdot does not support these extended characters, as I found out. So I could not display all of them.)
Not sure about the rest. The triangle COULD be a Greek Delta, but usually that is represented as a triangle with its base flat, not turned sideways. I have no idea what to make of the squiggly-"8"-like symbol. The three-pointed symbol could be a Greek Lambda, and possibly the top line is a Greek Tau. For the rest? You guess is as good as mine. I don't have the patience to go through CHARMAP symbol by symbol. Hopefully someone else just KNOWS this stuff.:-p
I'm not a genius, so I'll leave this to the board to ponder some more. But the way I figure it, once you have the whole middle paragraph in hex, you should be able to translate it easily enough.
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The date on the fax actually seems significant... TFA suggests that this was received by Fermilab just over a year ago, which was not long after the (very well publicized) Fermilab-manufactured quadropole triplet failure at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
According to a 2006 Princeton Physics News article (page three of the PDF), Frank Shoemaker was a pioneer in using quadopole doublets to focus particle beams... coincidence?
The timing seems suspect to me.
Re:I don't understand the interest
by
LaskoVortex
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· Score: 2, Interesting
For that matter, DNA is just code.
DNA is beyond just code. DNA can code for protein both forward and backwards in the same element, doubling the protien information its capable of specifying. The very same element can bind factors and contain "epigenetic" information in the form of modifications like methylation. It can also assume multiple three dimensional conformations, any of which can be decoded based on the cell's state or external stimuli. The information density of much of the genetic material in the planet is absolutely saturated. We look at DNA and apply Shannon's entropy to it and think we understand its information content. This is naivety. Shannon's entropy doesn't scratch the surface because the informational content of DNA depends on context, which is potentially infinite.
-- Just callin' it like I see it.
Part 2
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I played around with the 2nd part a bit here is what I saw:
F0BE58F2FD636C79D2E493E6 code 311311323232311222312233 occurrences of each letter
010111000000000000100010 dots per sign 311212323022223202212222 straight lines per sign 000010000300001030030000 circles per sign
121221111211111211242121 disjunct figures
Interesting:
1) 4 has the only symbol made out of 4 elements. The number of dots, lines and circles can be coded base 4. 2) There are dots all over the paper which can be seen as NOISE. This might be a hint that the solution lies in the dots of the symbols.
My guess is that we can decode the message in the symbols using the employee number base 16.
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
dintech
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· Score: 2, Interesting
From your theory, Bass E would be keyboard note E3 which is key 32 on a standard piano. It is also 164.814Hz.
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
dintech
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Further to my previous post, E3 is the hex representation of the ASCII code for pi:
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
Alarindris
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You may be on to something. Maybe the middle section are notes of a tune he didn't like? Like when your mom says rock and roll is just noise? Or maybe it's just random notes?(unlikely, I think)
A--------
G
F--------
E X here is our E
D--------
C
B--------
A
G--------
Those are the corresponding notes to the bass clef.
BASSE could be referring to the E below middle C (seen above) which is the 32nd key (from left to right or low to high on a piano) and is sometimes notated as E3.
IMHO, if he were to encode a song, it would probably be by piano key numbers, or E3 is the starting point (value of 0 or 1) although, that shouldn't make any difference at all.
A few more thoughts, 16 * 2 = 32.
14 unique symbols, thats 2 octaves of a 7 note scale (99% of what the average person has heard).
There are 24 'notes', possibly a song in 3/4, a waltz. (Think german drinking music, oom pa pa, oom pa pa. Or the underwater melody from Mario Bros.). That gives us 8 measures, plenty for a melody.
Burnt out for now, but coming back to this tomorrow.
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
JeepFanatic
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
So I post this then refresh the front page of/. to read this:
ET Will Phone Home Using Neutrinos, Not Photons
"Neutrinos are better than photons for communicating across the galaxy. That's the conclusion of a group of US astronomers who say that the galaxy is filled with photons that make communications channels noisy whereas neutrino comms would be relatively noise free. Photons are also easily scattered and the centre of the galaxy blocks them entirely. That means any civilisation advanced enough to have started to colonise the galaxy would have to rely on neutrino communications. And the astronomers reckon that the next generation of neutrino detectors should be sensitive enough to pick up ET's chatter."
(Emphasis mine). Coincidence?
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
Alarindris
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
From an AC down the thread:
The only 'basse' that I am aware of is a renaissance dance, which is usually in 3/2 time. The basse was the precursor of the pavanne. It may be a red herring, but John Downland composed a pavanne called 'The Shoemaker's Wife'
3/2 is essentially the same as 3/4 as is 6/8 and so on.
This may help somebody, not sure, I didn't find any obvious 24 note phrases, but music is interpretive, so I'll have to learn it and see if I can find anything.
Re:Regarding TFB(A)
by
xSacha
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Guys!
The symbols in the middle are: s F C Correct? You worked out F and C were the other two symbols but F and C is undefined.
Did you ever think it was: Shoemaker, F.C.? That is the initials Frank Shoemaker (mentioned in code)! In the website, using google, you will find only 7 occurances whereas you will find 107 occurances if you search for F. C. Shoemaker! Ding ding!
Pipe organ?
by
Wilson_6500
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A little half-hearted google searching indicates that "basse 16" has something to do with pipe organs. This is probably not relevant, though.
Re:Pipe organ?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
for an organ, the 16 refers to the length of the longest pipe in a specific rank of pipes.
An 8' pipe will sound at the "right" octave, whereas a 16' pipe would sound an octave lower, and a 4' would sound an octave higher.
Some of the stops in the organ have french names, so that would explain why "basse" came up on your search.
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
bonehead
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
That's actually very interesting. Were there any incidents during his time at Fermilab where seemingly interesting data was found, and Frank Shoemaker dismissed it as noise?
Has this colleague done further research, became convinced that it is significant, and pointing the direction to data that needs to be revisited?
Could this be someone's way of letting the folks at Fermilab know that they're sitting on a major breakthrough in their archives? One that has been dismissed as meaningless?
Who knows? Interesting stuff to ponder, though.
Re:Regarding TFB(A)
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
Second part (2 never repeats itself) could be some number in Fibonacci code (which has no adjacent 1 digits).
digits values from right to left are 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...
So the valid numbers are 1 10 100 101 1000 1001 1010 10000
Taking the whole as one number and then divmodding-64 single characters off it... Well, it would be rather compact.
Well, Obviously this is a test.
by
WindBourne
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I am guessing that it is one of 2 things
Seeing how we will do with alien messages. It is possible that we are trying so hard to see OUR information in there that we have missed the real message. Keep in mind that all of ource text is related to our experience. An alien's world will be different, so different context. IOW, we are seeing what we want to see and missing the real message.
The other is that this is an experiment by the NSA to see how humans solve an issue. I suspect that if this is not one, then we have 2 messages embedded in this. That is, there is an innocuous message designed to throw us off i.e. noise. The real message is hidden as steganography i.e. a telephone number or an email. tele is going to be easier to embed in there.
-- I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hex in the Middle
by
UCRowerG
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Repeating symbols in the middle, plus the complexity of the outer sections suggests (to me at least) that there is more than just a key here. Ignoring the symbols (which look a little like bastardized geometry notations) and breaking the hex into words:
The first section seemed to decode via base three. So converting the values produces:
f 0 b e 5 8 f 2 f d 6 3
6 c 7 9 d 2 e 4 9 3 e 6
122 000 102 121 012 022 122 002 122 111 020 010
020 110 021 100 111 020 121 011 100 010 121 020
Using the mapping in the first paragraph doesn't seem to make any sense:
RALQFI... or Q KPEH...
Who's to say I'm on the right track here, but if I am, I think a new mapping is required.
Slashdot Mirror
After some Google work:
Wilson Hall has a connection to ""Basse oeuvre". See this.
Wilson Hall has 16 floors, and you must have an employee badge to access the 16th floor.With my initial interpretation of the top part of the coded message I got the following output: (021) FRANK@SHOEMAKER@WOULD@CAMV@FTVTCAPSBC The second link does a better job explaining, but basically one of the "words" in ternary was "wrapped" and due to the lack of hyphen, this was misintrepreted by both crackers. What I find interesting is not that once you actually solve the stanza, you get "FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE," but rather that CALL THIS NOISE was the obscured part of the message. The signal that was hidden amongst the "noise" of a missing hyphen. The first cracker (John) speculates that he missed an indentation that indicates this (although he permits the possibility that it may be random), but I think there was no indentation, and the author wanted you to see the significance of this hidden word phrase (regarding "NOISE").
Again, just as I believe "BASSE" is significant because it is misspelled (when nothing else is), I believe this wrapped word is significant (when no other words are wrapped). It's possible the encoder did this just to make things a bit harder, but if you look at the fact that it happens exactly at the part of the sentence referring to "noise," I believe you must be more inclined to lend it significance.
Regarding BASSE, again, I am not a mathematician or a cracker, so I may be at a strong disadvantage here. If the significance of BASSE is taking the "extra" S and incorporating it into the middle stanza, I will be of little help to this collective effort. That said, if we attack the problem from a psychological/wordclue aspect... Googling "basse" doesn't help much, but google: fermilab basse
In summary, BASSE SIXTEEN is (possibly) a sixteen story Fermilab building, named Wilson Hall. The significance of "NOISE" is still lost on me, and I believe the middle stanza should help with forward momentum. I am now going to review both explanations linked from the
Perhaps more now than ever I wish
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Yes, and if anyone needed proof that open source is better than closed source for finding bugs or fixing security vulnerabilities, this is yet more evidence.
I'm not a cryptographer, but maybe it relates to musical notes (on a bass line rather than the standard EADGBE?).. in fact "would call this noise" also could suggest something similar, that the guy wouldn't enjoy the song the notes make? :p
which is totally what she said
Just to help you stay on track, a note about the odd line breaks from the link to the "thought process" from below:
The odd breaks occur because the way it's written is in a fixed-width row format. Each row contains an equal number of columns, and each column contains either a '|' or a ' ' (dash or space). The correct interpretation of the message removes the line breaks and translates the sentence as a single line.
The first stanza has 47 columns per row. The 5-6 and 6-7 breaks occur because the last column in line 5/6 is a '|' but the first column in line 6/7 is also a '|'.
The third stanza uses the same notation, but now each row consists of 85 columns. The 2-3 break has the same problem as in the first stanza, the row ran out of columns and the gap character had to be continued on the next row.
If you're looking for significance with those gaps, instead consider the number of columns per row, and the fact that both stanzas have 7 complete rows and an 8th partial row.
Misc numbers that may or may not be helpful:
25 columns in the last row of Stanza 1
21 columns in the last row of Stanza 3
The message seems to have been written by a left-handed person. Analysis of the vertical lines in the two partially decrypted stanzas show a consistant skew a few degrees to the left which increases towards the right side of the page.
Another clue on the psych path to decoding the SEKRIT MSGS !?
BLAM!
Why would that middle stanza only be a mapping, used to decode those three items? There seems to be too much information for it to be just that, especially since you only need to decode 3 'letters'.
So why the rest of the key? Why are some hex numbers repeated?
Why does every hex number (that shows up) appear once, twice or three times? Again with the three, again with the ternary? *Three* stanzas, all in some form of base *three*?
Just wondering out loud, I couldn't really get far with this train of thought but maybe someone else will be able to hop on.
My gut feeling was that it was a dig at Frank Shoemaker - i.e. Frank would miss the message in this because he would call it noise.
So, either a friend having a friendly jibe or a disgruntled ex-colleague lashing out (maybe at someone who told him that the "signal" he saw in some data was "just noise")?
But I think I am probably reading _way_ too much in to things here...
Expanding upon your "significance of 7 rows for both third and first stanza" theory, I immediately notice that the Wilson Hall building has 7 columns (count them: here and here. Your suggestion appears helpful.
;) ... myslashdotusernamewhichisfourcharacters.slashdot at gmail. Now I really wish I'd looked closer at the original story, instead of glancing and thinking, "wow, lots of math and the letter is probably a prank.. what else is there to read on slashdot today.."
If the orientation of the columns is rotated 90deg to make them rows, the stanzas may map to the columns in the building. If we assume the messages are significant, and the correlation to building "rows" is significant, and the left over "8th rows" from stanzas are significant.. we could derive all sorts of possibilities for the mapping of the remaining rows to a position in the building. Again, seeing how others here are much better at finding mathematically significant aspects than I am, I will throw this theory out and see if you or someone else can parse it.. because I believe the "25 columns in the last row of Stanza 1, 21 columns in the last row of Stanza 3" will need to be parsed somehow.
Also, speaking of my lack of math background-- can anyone post something useful for the second stanza? I know John and Geoff (linked crackers) have decoded the three character string below the second stanza, as being "508 (0Ã--1fc) or 2812 (0xafc)" but what about the second stanza itself? If it's base sixteen encoded can someone work on decoding it? We are really working with 2/3 of the available information here, and I think the remaining third will provide a lot of momentum.
also, as I expect this will continue long after this story is no longer at the top of the page, anyone who wants to collaborate via e-mail, may feel free to contact me. my email address is encoded as follows
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
I think the noise refers to the many black dots found on the page itself. Just below the vertical bottom of the first section, if you scroll all the way to the right you'll see a cluster of three dots and, going down-left from there, another two dots, another two dots, etc.
Or look at the symbol section. You'll see the first symbol for 6 looks like a horizontal bar with a vertical hook and a dot under the bar. The second symbol for 6 has no dot. And to the right of the second symbol for 6 is a vertical cluster of three dots.
Maybe they're nothing, but I get the sneaking suspicion that it's the dots (noise) that's the real puzzle here. Potentially with the symbols indicating the relative geometric arrangement of the dots that then map back to the letters/numbers.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
The target receives messages on his lab equipment, but the funny thing is that messages that can potentially change the course of time are gibberish (because then the originator wouldn't have sent them) and the harmless ones go through just fine. It's an interesting idea. How can you transmit important information this way ?
I won't spoil the book for you...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Basse Donnée system is a system that generates all the allowable solutions for given bass tasks within triads There are a few abstracts to the effect of the above that come on on google if one searches Basse and Science. I have no idea what it means, but i note: 1. It mentions triads - 3 is important in problem 2. It has something to do with music - sound, noise! 3. There is some sought of algorithm around it. ... Might be a trap though...
(http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110003111379/en/ )
When I saw the second paragraph, my first thought was to fire up Char Map.
:-p
Whereas other people kept thinking that the middle section was supposed to be substituting the hex numbers for the symbols above, I had to wonder if the symbols were trying to tell us something. After all, as was pretty clearly pointed out by the people who have solved paragraphs one and three, each section contains only five lines. (In fact, the middle paragraph was your clue to this one -- it was just obscured by the fact that it was in two different codes -- but still, only five lines).
Anyway, I realized that many of the symbols in the middle paragraph were in Charmap. AND each of these has a corresponding UTF code, which could be translated in to hex
For instance:
"Not Sign", U+00AC
"Inverted Exclamation Mark", U+00A1
"Greater Than Sign" (duh), U+003E
"Single Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark", U+203A (note in the code they are two different sizes)
"Greek Phi", U+03A6
(Unfortunately, slashdot does not support these extended characters, as I found out. So I could not display all of them.)
Not sure about the rest. The triangle COULD be a Greek Delta, but usually that is represented as a triangle with its base flat, not turned sideways. I have no idea what to make of the squiggly-"8"-like symbol. The three-pointed symbol could be a Greek Lambda, and possibly the top line is a Greek Tau. For the rest? You guess is as good as mine. I don't have the patience to go through CHARMAP symbol by symbol. Hopefully someone else just KNOWS this stuff.
I'm not a genius, so I'll leave this to the board to ponder some more. But the way I figure it, once you have the whole middle paragraph in hex, you should be able to translate it easily enough.
The date on the fax actually seems significant... TFA suggests that this was received by Fermilab just over a year ago, which was not long after the (very well publicized) Fermilab-manufactured quadropole triplet failure at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
... coincidence?
According to a 2006 Princeton Physics News article (page three of the PDF), Frank Shoemaker was a pioneer in using quadopole doublets to focus particle beams
The timing seems suspect to me.
DNA is beyond just code. DNA can code for protein both forward and backwards in the same element, doubling the protien information its capable of specifying. The very same element can bind factors and contain "epigenetic" information in the form of modifications like methylation. It can also assume multiple three dimensional conformations, any of which can be decoded based on the cell's state or external stimuli. The information density of much of the genetic material in the planet is absolutely saturated. We look at DNA and apply Shannon's entropy to it and think we understand its information content. This is naivety. Shannon's entropy doesn't scratch the surface because the informational content of DNA depends on context, which is potentially infinite.
Just callin' it like I see it.
I played around with the 2nd part a bit here is what I saw:
F0BE58F2FD636C79D2E493E6 code
311311323232311222312233 occurrences of each letter
010111000000000000100010 dots per sign
311212323022223202212222 straight lines per sign
000010000300001030030000 circles per sign
121221111211111211242121 disjunct figures
Interesting:
1) 4 has the only symbol made out of 4 elements. The number of dots, lines and circles can be coded base 4.
2) There are dots all over the paper which can be seen as NOISE. This might be a hint that the solution lies in the dots of the symbols.
My guess is that we can decode the message in the symbols using the employee number base 16.
From your theory, Bass E would be keyboard note E3 which is key 32 on a standard piano. It is also 164.814Hz.
Further to my previous post, E3 is the hex representation of the ASCII code for pi:
ASCII Table
It's 227 in decimal.
You may be on to something. Maybe the middle section are notes of a tune he didn't like? Like when your mom says rock and roll is just noise? Or maybe it's just random notes?(unlikely, I think)
A--------
G
F--------
E X here is our E
D--------
C
B--------
A
G--------
Those are the corresponding notes to the bass clef.
BASSE could be referring to the E below middle C (seen above) which is the 32nd key (from left to right or low to high on a piano) and is sometimes notated as E3.
Heres a link for non-musicians http://www.vibrationdata.com/piano.htm
IMHO, if he were to encode a song, it would probably be by piano key numbers, or E3 is the starting point (value of 0 or 1) although, that shouldn't make any difference at all.
A few more thoughts, 16 * 2 = 32.
14 unique symbols, thats 2 octaves of a 7 note scale (99% of what the average person has heard).
There are 24 'notes', possibly a song in 3/4, a waltz. (Think german drinking music, oom pa pa, oom pa pa. Or the underwater melody from Mario Bros.). That gives us 8 measures, plenty for a melody.
Burnt out for now, but coming back to this tomorrow.
3/2 is essentially the same as 3/4 as is 6/8 and so on.
Found the sheet music
http://www.freesheetmusic.net/dulcimer/TheShoemakersWife.pdf
This may help somebody, not sure, I didn't find any obvious 24 note phrases, but music is interpretive, so I'll have to learn it and see if I can find anything.
Guys!
The symbols in the middle are:
s F C
Correct? You worked out F and C were the other two symbols but F and C is undefined.
Did you ever think it was: Shoemaker, F.C.?
That is the initials Frank Shoemaker (mentioned in code)!
In the website, using google, you will find only 7 occurances whereas you will find 107 occurances if you search for F. C. Shoemaker! Ding ding!
A little half-hearted google searching indicates that "basse 16" has something to do with pipe organs. This is probably not relevant, though.
That's actually very interesting. Were there any incidents during his time at Fermilab where seemingly interesting data was found, and Frank Shoemaker dismissed it as noise?
Has this colleague done further research, became convinced that it is significant, and pointing the direction to data that needs to be revisited?
Could this be someone's way of letting the folks at Fermilab know that they're sitting on a major breakthrough in their archives? One that has been dismissed as meaningless?
Who knows? Interesting stuff to ponder, though.
Second part (2 never repeats itself) could be some number in Fibonacci code (which has no adjacent 1 digits).
...
digits values from right to left are 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13
So the valid numbers are
1
10
100
101
1000
1001
1010
10000
Taking the whole as one number and then divmodding-64 single characters off it... Well, it would be rather compact.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Repeating symbols in the middle, plus the complexity of the outer sections suggests (to me at least) that there is more than just a key here. Ignoring the symbols (which look a little like bastardized geometry notations) and breaking the hex into words:
... to decimal is...
...or binary...
...the length of which is divisible by three, curiously...
...or in decimal...
F0 BE 58 F2 FD 63
6C 79 D2 E4 93 E6
240 190 88 242 253 99
108 121 210 228 147 230
111100001011111001011000111100101111110101100011
11011000111100111010010111001001001001111100110
Taking each symbol/value individually:
111100001011111001011000111100101111110101100011
011011000111100111010010111001001001001111100110
111 100 001 011 111 001 011 000 111 100 101 111 110 101 100 011
011 011 000 111 100 111 010 010 111 001 001 001 001 111 100 110
7 4 1 3 7 1 3 0 7 4 5 7 6 5 4 3
3 3 0 7 4 7 2 2 7 1 1 1 1 7 4 6
The first section seemed to decode via base three. So converting the values produces:
f 0 b e 5 8 f 2 f d 6 3
6 c 7 9 d 2 e 4 9 3 e 6
122 000 102 121 012 022 122 002 122 111 020 010
020 110 021 100 111 020 121 011 100 010 121 020
Using the mapping in the first paragraph doesn't seem to make any sense:
RALQFI... or Q KPEH...
Who's to say I'm on the right track here, but if I am, I think a new mapping is required.
Look at the dots among the symbols.
01 01 10 (112) 00 00 10 (002)
00 00 00 (000) 10 00 10 (202)
The 2nd part is "NB T".
Note that Nb(t) is a notation representing noise.
:-)
^(oo)^pig~