digg

Facebook Connect Join Digg About
See the original image at chicagotribune.com

Crack this secret code

chicagotribune.com — The enigma began last year when a plain envelope with no return address arrived at the world-famous physics laboratory outside Chicago, addressed simply to "Fermilab." Inside was a single sheet marked by pen with a bizarre series of hash marks, numbers and alien-looking symbols. No one knew what it was. A joke? A threat? So they posted it online...

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 11, 2008

Digg DudeWhat is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as submitted and voted on by the community. Take the Tour to learn more.

218 Comments

show profanity settings
expand all
  • doctechnical, on 07/11/2008, -4/+343"B...u....y..m....

    o....r....e...o....v...

    a...l....t....i...

    OH for crying out loud!
  • inactive, on 07/11/2008, -17/+296Cracked it:
    Never gonna give you up
    Never gonna let you down
    Never gonna run around and desert you
    Never gonna make you cry
    Never gonna say goodbye
    Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
  • RyomaNagare, on 07/11/2008, -23/+144Its rather easy
    it reads

    Were no strangers to love
    You know the rules and so do i
    A full commitments what Im thinking of
    You wouldnt get this from any other guy

    I just wanna tell you how Im feeling
    Gotta make you understand

    * never gonna give you up
    Never gonna let you down
    Never gonna run around and desert you
    Never gonna make you cry
    Never gonna say goodbye
    Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
  • cojerk, on 07/11/2008, -1/+112It says:

    "To all Fermilab employees: Quit dicking around with junkmail and get back to work.

    -Management"
  • benroy, on 07/11/2008, -3/+109"Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine."
  • smrekar, on 07/11/2008, -6/+103Always drink your ovaltine.
  • thylacine222, on 07/11/2008, -1/+85I don't think I would want to date you either.
  • artfiend77, on 07/11/2008, -2/+78Oh this is so old guys. it was a message from Iran to the US:

    " All your base are belong to us"

  • f0ad, on 07/11/2008, -0/+69It's not a PDF, it's a high quality JPEG
  • Junkey, on 07/11/2008, -3/+59BAH the Zodiac is back!
  • rentmitchum, on 07/11/2008, -0/+51Imagine if Digg was around when the Zodiac was terrorizing people. Pooling all of the talents of digg and with all of our powers combined, I'm sure we could have not only rick rolled him, but revealed him to be a rogue Scientologist as well.
  • inactive, on 07/11/2008, -3/+52They only solved part of it. Can anyone else figure out the rest?
  • sonar1, on 07/11/2008, -4/+49its the url to get rickrolld
  • seabass10, on 07/11/2008, -1/+46very cool. i don't think i would have the attention span to solve the rest though.
  • Peck3277, on 07/11/2008, -1/+44My Dad beat me :(
  • versionist, on 07/11/2008, -2/+44The letters/numbers are hexadecimal. And there are 12 of them. First thing I thought of was colors. Converting them to RGB:

    240,190,88
    242,253,99
    108,121,210
    228,150,230

    And then from there it is rather simp%!$*%& [NO CARRIER]"

  • noahgelman, on 07/11/2008, -18/+59***** THE RIAA
  • inactive, on 07/11/2008, -2/+40I know, my attention span is so short now that I... hey look, porn!
  • NikkiA, on 07/11/2008, -1/+34All I could make out was something about ovaltine.
  • Ragzouken, on 07/11/2008, -1/+31It's what bloggers call 'the internet'.
  • dpcdomino, on 07/11/2008, -3/+33I was going to digg your comment but I do not want to date myself.
  • Ymeg, on 07/11/2008, -2/+32I swear, this will do decades without being solved and then be figured out by some kid on his computer.
  • Seafea, on 07/11/2008, -3/+31It's going to end up being a Rickroll.
  • vexingmodstwo, on 07/11/2008, -4/+31I wouldn't rule out this being some kind of ARG / viral PR stunt. But it is fascinating.
  • falstaff, on 07/11/2008, -0/+26"FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE." = There's a bunch of extra garbage data in the message.
    "EMPLOYEE NUMBER BASSE SIXTEEN." = He gave you the employee number.
    The top part of the key section is the key (with the extra noise to confuse you), then the three symbols alone at the bottom are the employee number. The "S" symbol doesn't appear in the key, which accounts for all the base 16 numbers except for 1 and A, so converting the 3 symbols to base 10 yields either 508 (if you sub 1 for the S) or 2812 (if you sub A).
    Naturally, for the 99.999999% of people that have never worked there, this means nothing.
  • gavin422, on 07/11/2008, -9/+34It's probably just some dude who scribbled something on a sheet of paper and sent it to Fermilab to mess with them.
  • AzureRise, on 07/11/2008, -0/+25Cuz they couldn't crack it.
  • inactive, on 07/11/2008, -8/+32Here's a .pdf of the letter:
    http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/wp-conten ...
  • OliveStreet, on 07/11/2008, -2/+25Wait, it's a cookbook ....

    The title ...THE TITLE...: "To Serve Man"
  • geobay, on 07/11/2008, -1/+24Mostly doucebags
  • propagandhi, on 07/11/2008, -1/+22"So long, and thanks for all the fish."
  • gametavern, on 07/11/2008, -1/+22Get Russell Crow in here now!
  • Briandt75, on 07/11/2008, -0/+20A CRUMMY COMMERCIAL!?!
  • inactive, on 07/11/2008, -0/+20They're all the symbols that didn't make the cut for Led Zeppelin IV.
  • versionist, on 07/11/2008, -0/+20he encrypted "JPEG". The result was ".pdf".
  • acmaurer, on 07/11/2008, -6/+25I think it's awesome that they allowed the blogging community to take a look at it. I wonder why they decided to do that instead of keeping it private.
  • gavin422, on 07/11/2008, -0/+19It'd be even better if he made half of the message decipherable and the other half random scribbles.
  • boardthis, on 07/11/2008, -1/+19how to crack this code...

    1. buy a box of cap'n crunch
    2. unwrap the cellophane package at the bottom of the box
    3. using the secret decoder marker, color over the message
    4. win
  • rentmitchum, on 07/11/2008, -3/+20What if it's a woman? iClit sensitivity +1?
  • xombiefarts, on 07/11/2008, -0/+17this is never going to die is it.
  • Funkleft, on 07/11/2008, -0/+16e-boob size increase
  • DraxusD, on 07/11/2008, -0/+15The stuff they've deciphered turning up would be one hell of a coincidence
  • ZeNiTH456, on 07/11/2008, -0/+15Employee number is 508?

    The second section has characters and keys for the character which are in hex (base 16). It is missing a character for 1 though, which I'll assume is "s". So 1FC = 508.

    Or... it could be 0xFC01, so that would be employee number 64513.
  • je12u, on 07/12/2008, -4/+19Never gonna digg you up
    only gonna digg you down
    Cause you don't deserve diggs do you?
    Stolen comments really suck
    You jacked cdemi
    and thought we wouldn't notice, you jerk you....
  • ngageguy, on 07/11/2008, -2/+15Simple, The answer is 42. Signed- Marvin
  • rentmitchum, on 07/11/2008, -1/+14lol.. you guys never give up.
  • Andytom, on 07/12/2008, -0/+12S could just be and S which gives S0xFC or S252. A quick Google search gives us Pierre Piroue another former employee of Fermilab and friend of Shoemaker.
  • alexkball, on 07/12/2008, -0/+11yeah i'm sure they never thought of that.
  • inactive, on 07/11/2008, -0/+11Frank Shoemaker would have none of your JPDFs. He would take that letter and ram it into your stomach.
  • ngmcs8203, on 07/11/2008, -0/+10Seems more like an inside joke to me if you read the article.
  • Fetching more discussions...
    Show 51 - 100 of 224 discussions

  • Add a Comment

    Login or register to comment!
    Or, sign-in super fast with your Facebook account ...

© Digg Inc. 2009 — Content created and posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain | Terms of Use Updated | Privacy Policy
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.