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Wade McGillis

@Unixbigot @mcc

François, who had gotten that information from his friends at CNRS, begin, "First of all, the burst of base eight numbers are coming in groups of 16,769,021, with a longer break between each group. And what makes that interesting is that some bright people ran it through a simple factoring program and discovered thatit's equal to 4093 times 4097 - two prime numbers."

"Uh, excuse my being dumb, but this means ... ?" Lori asked.

19 Dec 2023 at 0:51 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mastodon.social
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Wade McGillis

@Unixbigot @mcc

"Since a prime number isn't divisible by any other number, if you're transmitting a grid-type pattern--say a picture or a chart--and its size is the product of two primes, then there are only a couple of possible arrangements for the numbers in the grid. If either number were not prime, there'd be a very large number of possible arrangements, and that would mean you wouldn't be able to figure out what the picture was a picture of."

19 Dec 2023 at 0:52 | Open on mastodon.social
Wade McGillis

@Unixbigot @mcc

skip a few paragraphs

"Has anyone tried to assemble the pictures yet?" Lori asked.
"I thought you'd never ask," Jiro said. "I have a feeling that everywhere on Earth people are showing this to each other, but they don't have quite the nerve to display it publicly."

excerpt of page 95 from "Encounter with Tiber", by Buzz Aldrin & John Barnes

19 Dec 2023 at 0:53 | Open on mastodon.social
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