crop circle decoded

[Triple Zero]

interesting:

http://logosmythos.net/wilton_windmill_crop_circle_may_2010.html

[Elder Iptuous]

nanny wall protests. 
copy paste?  or quote of introsummary?

[Triple Zero]

another link then: http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/wilton/comments.html

and a picture:



basically this one crop circle is a bunch of concentric circles with spokes and protruding lines kind of like that old Ogham alphabet, except the lines signify binary code, with eight bits at each spoke, and when you convert them to ASCII it spells the message e^(hi)pi)1=0 which is remarkably much like Euler's formula, e^{pi * i} + 1 = 0.

Euler's formula is considered to be one of the most beautiful formulas in Mathematics, because it elegantly combines the most important basic constants of Real numbers: e, pi, i, 1 and 0. It is said that when Euler figured out this formula he said it was proof of God's existence (he probably meant this tongue-in-cheek, I think).

It's pretty obvious this must have been done on purpose (be it by pranksters or aliens), since the most significant bit of all these characters is zero, which can be seen as the inner circle of protruding lines all pointing the same (counterclockwise) direction. This is because ASCII is actually only unambiguously defined for the lower 7 bits, the characters with numbers 0-127. The top 128-255 characters are defined based on the so-called "code page", which depends on locale, and gives you a selection of accented characters or box-drawing characters and stuff like that, but they are not always the same cause in some languages you need different accents than others and you can't fit them all in the high ASCII chart (which is why they invented Unicode).

This gives the encoded message that typical "7 bit ASCII encoded in 8 bits" structure, which is IMO a big hint on how it's supposed to be decoded.

Why it doesn't exactly say e^(pi*i)+1=0 is a bit of a mystery, though. The final ) could be a bit-flip mistake, flipping the second lowest bit makes it a +. But the crud at the beginning of the formula is a bit less easy to explain.

[bds]

My very limited knowledge of binary suggests some form of parity maybe? Could account for weird bits, I guess.

[Rev. Dr. Narot]

If the aliens have ascii, does that mean their space ships have standard English QWERTY keyboards, too? Fuck I'd be so disappointed to board an alien craft and see a bunch of cheap $10 keyboards from Fry's lying around

[Reginald Ret]

heh

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is massive awesomeness on such an intense geek level I can hardly stand it. It makes my nipples hard.

[Triple Zero]

They could be timetravellers!

I mean, it makes sense, they probably don't have ASCII anymore in the future and tried their best to use a coding scheme that we can read, except because it was lost they kind of fucked it up.

Obviously they wanted to use a medium that would be familiar to us.

And since after the solar flares, climate changes and the great Oil-spills of the Dolphin Guerilla Wars, the only artifact left of our era in their future is a bunch of crackpot conspiracy magazines buried and encased in a lead container by some lunatic paranoid about two or three years from now.

So, they figure, if time travellers would try to contact us we would expect them to do it via crop circles and convoluted mathematical language and coding schemes.

It all makes sense if you think about it, really.

[Rev. Dr. Narot]

Got a fantastic insight on my question from a Computer Scientist™ friend and fellow UFO fanatic:

"They probably learned ASCII from intercepting electrical signals around earth. And they don't have devices that can translate the high and low signals to English characters so they just make them into pictures so we can still (hopefully) figure it out"

What does everyone think of the debunking crop circles stuff? That it's just some rope and a paddle and a couple dudes plowing around? The precision and everything is impressive, I don't think I could pull off a hoax nearly as effective.

[Dimocritus]

It's a hoax. Though, if "aliens" were real, I'd assume them to be time-travellers, not intergalactic nomads.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What's a hoax? Are you saying that the crop circle doesn't exist, or that it's not really a binary code?

[Dimocritus]

What's a hoax? Are you saying that the crop circle doesn't exist, or that it's not really a binary code?

That it's not aliens that made it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What's a hoax? Are you saying that the crop circle doesn't exist, or that it's not really a binary code?

That it's not aliens that made it.

Well, duh.

It's anthropologists from the future.

[Rev. Dr. Narot]

What's a hoax? Are you saying that the crop circle doesn't exist, or that it's not really a binary code?

That it's not aliens that made it.

Don't you know that everything that can't be explained and has a hint of complexity is from aliens and just gets covered up by the government?

[Jasper]

I know that this sort of thing is done by pranksters with boards to flatten the crops, but I've never seen it done with such...geekiness.