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Breaking the Fermilab Code
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
IF I HAD A MINE SHAFT, I don't think I would just abandon it. There's got to be a better way. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
Ahhh (Score:2)
Which
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But I do wonder, if it's employee 252 (rather than 508)? Reasoning:
First section looks to be the "easiest" of the 3 to decode without context. It contains a message the meaning of which is of course in question -- but maybe its purposes are (1) to establish the rules of the code for the third section, so that (with a little notational tweak) it's reasonable to solve the third, and (2) to take a jab at Sh
That was ridiculously quick (Score:5, Insightful)
Many eyes make all bugs shallow (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Many eyes make all bugs shallow (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not really. This only shows that a lot of people will try to solve interesting problems, and some of them eventually will. It does not say anything about open source software and finding bugs or security vulnerabilities, which involves (among other things) reading tons of "boring" code.
Note: I did not say that open source is bad for finding bugs and vulnerabilities, I just want to mention that breaking this code does not say anything about open source software.
Re:Many eyes make all bugs shallow (Score:5, Insightful)
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Furthermore, many bugs do NOT make all bugs shallow - look at recent news, the 25 year old BSD bug, the Debian OpenSSL debacle. Why did the many eyes not make those bugs shallow? Partly because that isn't an interesting problem for nearly as many people as the fermilab stuff, and partly because code changes.
You see, I could fully audit some code tomorrow
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Note: I did not say that open source is bad for finding bugs and vulnerabilities, I just want to mention that breaking this code does not say anything about open source software.
You're correct. Here, people are working to figure out a common consensus on a solution. The open source world, by contrast, is all about a million people each finding their own solution. Speaking of finding one's own solution, everybody don your tinfoil hat: the answer lies in the number 23 [wikipedia.org]. Wait, did I say 23? I meant Wikipedia.
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Re:That was ridiculously quick (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That was ridiculously quick (Score:4, Funny)
I'm pretty sure they will now.
solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, based on the "employee number" speculation in the second link especially, I want to point out that although I am the furthest thing from a "codecracker," I do believe the BASSE misspelling of BASE is intentional and is a clue. Likewise, the FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE stanza may be a reference to his work for fermilab (detecting signal that often hides amongst noise), but is probably a double entendre of some sort. If someone is methodical enough to encode this text and mail it to Fermilab, they wouldn't misspell such a simple word (BASE), unless for a good reason. Along these same lines of thought, I believe the "noise" comment is also a clue with multiple meanings. Also, from what I gather, the middle stanza can be assumed to be hex, so that makes the third stanza fairly insignificant, unless it has other meaning (hence looking at "BASSE" for a clue as to some other meaning).
Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly,
All your Basse are belong to us.
Sorry.
Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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Also, does the paper have any indentations from previous letters, and can the paper itself be identified as a particular type?
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I'm not sure what I'm missing but I could not see a 2nd Stanza. The second paragraph is actually a lookup for the three characters below it.... well actually it's a partial lookup as it does not have all of base 16 in it.
Anyway, I think all the data has been decoded but as the FA says, not all meaning has been derived and the three characters still has ambiguity in it.
Hope this helps.
Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:4, Insightful)
Does EFC mean anything?
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Maybe we should be looking for a building with 46 floors? Actually, I don't believe much in the whole building thing.
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marking the trailing ones of those, I get this:
111 11 111 11 111 111 111 111 1 1 1 11 1 111 11
111 111 111 11 111 1 111 11 11 1 11 111 111 1_
11 1 1 1 111 111 1 1 111 11 111 1 11 11 111 111
111 111 111 11 1 11 1 11 111 11 1 111 1 1 111
111 1 1 111 111 111 111 1 111 111 111 1 1 1 1_
11 1 1 111 111 111 111 11 111 11 111 11 11 1 1
11 111 11 111 1 111 111 111 1 1 11 1 11 111 1_
111 111 11 111 1 111 1 11
A mess really.
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111 11 111 11 111 111 111 111 1 1 1 11 1 111 11
_111 111 111 11 111 1 111 11 11 1 11 111 111 1_
11 1 1 1 111 111 1 1 111 11 111 1 11 11 111 111
_111 111 111 11 1 11 1 11 111 11 1 111 1 1 111
_111 1 1 111 111 111 111 1 111 111 111 1 1 1 1_
11 1 1 111 111 111 111 11 111 11 111 11 11 1 1
11 111 11 111 1 111 111 111 1 1 11 1 11 111 1_
111 111 11 111 1 111 1 11
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1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789
xxx xx xxx|xx xxx xxx|xxx xxx x|x x xx|x xxx xx
020=F 200=R 001=A 112=N 102=K
|xxx xxx xxx|xx xxx x|xxx xx xx|x xx xxx|xxx x_
000=_ 201=S 022=H 120=O 012=E
xx|x x x|xxx xxx x|x xxx xx|xxx x xx|xx xxx xxx
111=M 001=A 102=K 012=E 200=R
|xxx xxx xxx|xx x xx|x xx xxx|xx x xxx|x x xxx
000=_ 212=W 120=O 210=U 110=L
|xxx x x|xxx xxx xxx|xxx x xxx|xxx xxx x|x x x
011=D 000=_
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would have 85 columns across. Is such paper common?
The 46 seems more arbitrary/significant though.
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Left Hander (Score:4, Interesting)
Another clue on the psych path to decoding the SEKRIT MSGS !?
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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...
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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? Interes
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Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I think the noise refers to the many black dots found on the page itself.
I think the statement "Frank Shoemaker would call this noise" may actually be self-referential ie: It adds nothing to the main message, it is only a misdirection.
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Interesting idea (Score:2)
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I assume you've also looked at the man the building is named after, Robert R. Wilson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_R._Wilson [wikipedia.org]
Possibly of some coincidence, Robert Wilson has a sculpture named "Topological III", which is on display at "Cabot Science Center building, Harvard University." which you can see at the above wikipedia page. From what I can tell from the photo, it looks like a representation of a kind of Mobius strip.
I only looked at the sculpture because the name co
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"Lower Normandy" is "Basse-Normandie". Basse-Terre is the capital of Guadeloupe. Basse Pointe is a city in Martinique. "Basse chiffree" is "figured bass", a particular type of musical notation. There's a city named Basse in Gambia.
"Basse" is a surname, and I think it's been used that way in that spelling in many countries for a couple of centuries at least. The most famous Basse of which I can thi
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However, it is not hard to break binary hex code. But I believe that this is hex binary, however as it is being transported over a paper it was fitted into this form for easy transport.
I believe that the first code is something like 0x0c and the second is something like 0x0e, the third 0x02, the forth is 0x012. However, I have to give me more time to look at this so my on the spot decoding is most likely flawed and far from correct.
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Probably nothing useful and probably already done by someone else but anyway
Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:4, Interesting)
According to a 2006 Princeton Physics News article [princeton.edu] (page three of the PDF), Frank Shoemaker was a pioneer in using quadopole doublets to focus particle beams
The timing seems suspect to me.
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So...
"FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE"
"EMPLOYEE NUMBER BASSE SIXTEEN"
So I wonder if the "BASSE" building's sixteenth floor has a room whose number is equal to Frank Shoemaker's employee number or phone extension...
Maybe there's something in that room that would be needed to decode the rest of the message.
Or maybe "BASSE SIXTEEN" refers to the building (It has sixteen floors), and it's asking for the employee number of Rob
As a FNAL user (not employee) (Score:2)
As someone who works at FNAL as a grad. student I believe that the 16th floor of Wilson Hall is the "attic" I believe the observation deck is on floor 15. IMO, I doubt that the message is referring to anything up there.
Frank Shoemaker is a Princeton physicist who also does his research at FNAL. Neither his mail station number of phone number match any of the numbers given in the message. (I don't want to give his info out because people will contact him.)
Finally, I believe Robert Wilson's User ID nu
Actually, this is more interesting than u realize (Score:3, Insightful)
I see 2 issues here, The first is that it really was too easily "solved". My guess is that the real message really is being missed (i..e keep looking).
But the second and more important i
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I've got nothing.
Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Interesting)
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ASCII Table [asciitable.com]
It's 227 in decimal.
Pipe organ? (Score:3, Interesting)
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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
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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.
Found the sheet music
http://www.freesheetmusic.net/dulcimer/TheShoemakersWife.pdf [freesheetmusic.net]
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.
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An additional link. (Score:5, Informative)
FRANK@SHOEMAKER@WOULD@CALL@THIS@NOISE (Score:3, Funny)
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Damn, looks like I got the destination number wrong too.
BASSE (Score:5, Interesting)
After some Google work:
Wilson Hall has a connection to ""Basse oeuvre". See this [fermilabtoday.com].
Wilson Hall has 16 floors, and you must have an employee badge to access the 16th floor.Re:BASSE (Score:4, Interesting)
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Almost isn't good enough! ;) (Score:2)
Answer =! Question. (Score:4, Funny)
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Middle stanza not a key? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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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' remai
Message by time travel (Score:2, Interesting)
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 t
Re:Message by time travel (Score:5, Informative)
Basse Donnée system (BDS) (Score:5, Interesting)
Second Stanza ANSI Block Characters (Score:2)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms947792.aspx
Done! (Score:4, Funny)
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oblig xkcd (Score:2, Funny)
Save It for the Geekend! (Score:3, Funny)
And the author was... (Score:2)
Has anyone considered it might be a trap? (Score:2)
Using Fermilab to do my homework (Score:2)
Maybe ANL is behind this? (Score:2)
The phone number (630) 508-2812 appears to be for a cell phone in the greater Chicago area, however, in the classified ad of an ANL newsletter, a (630) 508-xxxx number can be found [64.233.167.104], as can another reference in a nearby Clarendon Hills, IL newsletter [64.233.167.104]. It might be reasonable to think that these numbers were allocated from a nearby store.
Hex in the Middle (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Did anybody else misread the title as... (Score:2)
...breaking the Feminine code?
Last Piece (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
:-)
Re:Regarding TFB(A) (Score:5, Informative)
1) FRANK@SHOEMAKER@WOULD@CALL@THIS@NOISE
Second part unknown
2) ?
Third part ternary code, II= seperator, same mapping as 1)
3) EMPLOYEE@NUMBER@BASSE@SIXTEEN
It is assumed the three hex symbols are the employee number 0xAFC,
CHAR MAP (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Regarding TFB(A) (Score:5, Funny)
1) FRANK@SHOEMAKER@WOULD@CALL@THIS@NOISE
2) ?
3) profit
(Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING
Part 2 (Score:2, Interesting)
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 migh
Well, Obviously this is a test. (Score:5, Interesting)
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What remains are some very "strong" dots between code group 1 and code group 2. In fact, there is the impression of a "tail" or something similar to the right. There are very few dots interspersed with code group 1 and code group 2, most of which I dismiss as artifacts left by the fax process.
This examination also sho
Re:Regarding TFB(A) (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
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Re:I don't understand the interest (Score:5, Funny)
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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
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Getting back to the title of this post - Code is interesting for it's own sake, if the original poster can't see the beauty and terror of a "clockwork universe" in that video, words won't help.