Observations from the
Alien
& Code formation, Crabwood
Filling the gaps in the code
Below is an image where I have marked ALL the 1368 bits in the code.
The separator bits are marked with blue dots, others with red dots.
Our main interest, however is pointed towards the bits marked with
green rings. These are "extra" bits, not belonging to the
ASCII code giving out the plain English text (see
page 2).
(If you wish, you can use this diagram to check all the ASCII codes
for yourself)
As I told before, there are 152 9-bit characters. However, in the
English message there are only 151 characters. Where is the missing
character? Answer: It is split in several parts of the code. So
we need to find 9 bits (one of which should be the separator):
In the beginning there is 01 (number 1 in the above image),
in the end of the 'h' of the word 'the' (2) there is an extra
0, in the end of the 'B' of 'BELIEVE' (3) there is an extra
1, in the beginning of the V in the same word (4) is an extra
0101 and finally in the very end of the code (5)there is 0
(the separator bit before it belongs to the last character, '\').
Here we have the "missing" nine bits!
010101010 (one of the bits should be the separator?)
Is there any clue how to organise these scattered bits? Should they
bere looked at separately, should they be connected into one number
or character?
The most interesting part is the 4 additional bits in the beginning
of 'V' in BELIEVE. How do we know this should be read as 'V' in the
first place? There is no separator between the first 4 bits and the
last 8 bits, rather it is an intact row of 12 bits. I think the fact
that only 'V' would make it a meaningful word is sufficient clue to
take the last 8 bits instead of the first or the middle 8 (both of
which would produce the letter 'U', and BELIEUE doesn't make sense).
Anyway, the 12-bit number as a total is 010101010110 in binary,
1366 in decimal. 1366 is very very close to 1368, the total number
of bits in the code, coincidence?
In respect to the ASCII code, the first 01 and the last 10 are only
separators. Generally, the separator is just 1 (or rather a "half
1", which also seems to be the case at least with the last separator),
but in the beginning and end it would be difficult to distinguish
these from the long "tails" in both ends of the spiral.
So the "0's" could be seen as only gaps to separate the
separators from the tails! Hence the actual number of bits in the
code could indeed be EXACTLY 1366!
Now if the 12-bit number in 'V' gives us the total number of relevant
bits in the code (for what reason?), why are the letters 'h' (in the
first 'the'-word) and 'B' (in 'BELIEVE') also "highlighted"
with an extra bit? If we take these characters as numbers, including
the extra bits, we get 208 (h) and 133 (B). Does this mean anything?
Let's split these number into their prime number factors:
208 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 13
133= 7 x 19
I'm not sure if this means anything, but at least 13 could be another
hint to the Mayan Calendar and 19 was found to be somehow a relevant
number on the previous page. On the other
hand, these could be just meaningless random numbers.
If we forget the 1366, 288 and 133 and look at all the nine bits
in a row:
01+0+1+0101+0 = 010101010 binary = 170 decimal
(01 in the beginning, 0 in 'h', 1 in 'B', 0101 in 'V' and 0 in the
end).
Every other bit is 0, every other is 1. Could this have a meaning?
There is no ASCII code for 170, because only the first 128 characters
are in use - so it is not a letter. Again, I don't know. Only one
number really makes some sence at the moment, 1366. I can only hope
somebody has a meaning for the other numbers!
Veli Martin, Oct 30, 2002
  
|