Why 1679 digits?

The reason for this is down to mathematics. 1679 is the unique product of two prime numbers; 23 and 73. Any sufficiently intelligent lifeform would no doubt look for unique, universal constructs - such as prime numbers, chemical element frequencies and binary digits. Don't forget that because we could be trying to communicate with an intelligence completely different to our own, we cannot talk in terms of 'human' systems, such as centimetres, feet, decimal numbers etc.

Because ONLY the two prime numbers 23 and 73, when multiplied together, produce 1679 there can only be a single way to arrange the signal, if you were converting it into a matrix grid - 23 squares by 73 squares.

The original binary code is shown in figure 1.

Binary coding....

In order to fully understand the message encoded in the transmission, it's essential to understand the binary code. This is actually much simpler than our base 10, decimal system. Whereas in base 10 we count from 1 to 9 and then carry 1 into the 10's column and start again in the units column, until we've got 9 in the 10's column and 9 in the units column. Then we have to carry 1 into the 100's column and start again in the 10's and units columns, and so on and so on.

In binary each column goes up in powers of 2, hence the columns are units, 2's, 4's, 8's, 16's etc. Because we can only deal in 1's and 0's, we rapidly move up through the columns - because as soon as we exceed 1 we carry into the next column. For an example of counting in binary, see the table to the right.

To go back to the original transmission of binary pulses (fig.1), by converting it into 23 columns of 73 rows we get the matrix shown in figure 2 (left).

You can now see a graphical pattern depicted by the 1's and 0's of the code. For clarity I've converted this into black squares (representing 1's) and white (empty) squares (representing 0's). You can see that viewing it like this, makes the actual message a lot clearer, as shown below, in figure 3.

This is where a slight puzzle becomes visible. By performing the steps described above, the literal translation of the original pulses is on the left of figure 3. However, the image printed in a couple of my books is that shown on the right of figure 3. This is an exact left-right mirror image of my decoding. I suspect that this is possibly an error which went un-noticed when the book went to print - although I have checked two books which both depict the same pattern as shown on the right of figure 3.

The pattern which occurred in the Chilbolton crop field, is the same image as shown in the books (ie. the one on the right of fig.3 and the mirror image of the original decoding). This could imply that IFsomeone hoaxed the formation, they copied the incorrect pattern printed in a book. Alternatively, I may have converted the original pulses by mapping left to right when converting into a 23x73 grid, instead of going from right to left - which personally doesn't seem correct to my interpretation of the original binary sequence.

If anyone can explain this discrepancy, I would love to hear your comments. However, for the purposes of the rest of this article I shall refer to the pattern physically laid in the crop field. The results are the same because the actual code remains unchanged irrespective of whether it's the original or a mirror image anyway - as the binary coding remains unaltered.

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