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Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#481

Post by joppy »

dredmorbius wrote: post #237
lultimouomo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy really is something: > I looked at rock type (Sandstone), color (red and white - no black streaks like found on higher cliffs in Utah), shape (more rounded indicating a more exposed area and erosion), the texture of the canyon floor (flat rock vs sloped indicating higher up in a watershed with infrequent water), and the larger cliff/mesa in the upper background of one of the photos. I took all that and lined…

44 bits. It's relatively well known that 33 distinct bits is enough to uniquely identify any individual person now alive on Earth.[1] Geospatially, assuming 10m resolution, 44 bits is enough to identify any unique location on Earth's land surface (46 bits buys you the oceans). Searching for a ~1m^2 monolith visually within a 10m^2 square is reasonable. GNU units: You have: ln((.3 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln…

Is this relevant? It is "well known" that log2(world population) is about equal to 33, so theoretically if you numbered every human alive consecutively you would only need 33 bits to store the number. But this is a long shot from estimating the amount of data required to pick someone out of a crowd. For example, perhaps you are just given a bunch of low-resolution pictures of people's foreheads: do you only need "33 bits"? What does that mean?

Likewise, identifying a random location on earth from a photo is certainly doable, but I would say it has less to do with the logarithm of the surface area of the earth and much more to do with expertise in geography, geology, etc.

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#482

Post by puranjay »

oh_sigh wrote: post #429
cantrevealname wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> installed 2015-2016 based on satellite imagery Unless the artist practiced very good OpSec or was so disciplined that he never checked for satellite imagery of his monument, someone with the right credentials -- like the government with a subpeona or a Google insider -- could identify the artist based on his IP address. Murderers have been identified and convicted by looking up a unique map coordinate on Google Map…

That's how they found the boyfriend of Olivia Newton-John, who had faked his own death. He was the most frequent visitor to the website set up to help find him(that's literally true - the website was a trap they had hoped he would visit) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_McDermott

> The investigators claimed McDermott disappeared to avoid debts, including US$8,000 owed to his ex-wife for child support

That's...a surprisingly small amount to fake your own death over.

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#483

Post by eirki »

ABeeSea wrote: post #320
matthewdgreen wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s amusing that the takeaway from this episode is “the intelligence agencies screwed up” and not “the intelligence agencies found no evidence, and then were directly pressured by their political masters to construct evidence to justify a desired military outcome.”

It wasn’t even a real intelligent agency that drummed up support for war. It was a temporary agency created by Rumsfelds and Cheney with the Orwellian name of “Office of Special Plans.” They deliberately lied and misused raw intelligence signals to force us to war. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans

Reminds me of the "House of Special Purpose"

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=House_of_Special_...

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#484

Post by slightwinder »

codetrotter wrote: post #441

> "It is illegal to install structures or art without authorisation on federally managed public lands, no matter what planet you're from," the department said. Is that really true though? Does earth rules apply to life from other planets? And what if the extraterrestrial life are magnitudes of order stronger and technologically advanced than us? I mean we could demand it but in effect it would be nothing but words. T…

> Does earth rules apply to life from other planets?

Any law applys to their territory, independant on whether the culprit is a citizen of that country or a foreigner. Whether they can execute the law is of course a different story. But from where someone comes from doesnt matter in the first place.

Though, you could argue whether laws are limited to humans or whether they apply to every species. AFter all we don't apply the same laws to animals and humans, there are usually differnt sets for each.

> The only reason that laws work is because of the threat of what happens if you don’t obey. If we are not in a position to threaten the extra terrestrials then we are also not in a position to dictate rules for them to follow.

This is a classical problem of international laws. Country A can't execute laws to citizien of country B, because country B is stinky, or citizien already has left country A. Usually there are contracts for this, so in certain cases country B will give their citizien to Country A if the case is heavy enough to justify such an act. But of course they can also just ignore it.

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#485

Post by slightwinder »

saalweachter wrote: post #126
DavidPeiffer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For just that weight of metal...not too expensive. To get it formed into that shape, potentially very expensive. It looks like aluminum. Someone posted 23.5" x 23.5" x ~144" as the dimensions. This comes out to be 46 cubic feet, and would weigh about 7,700 lbs. A floor of the price would be ~40 cents/lb scrap price, or ~$3,100. Ballpark 80-120 cents/lb might be a more realistic price if it were straightforward to man…

Which is all wrong. The monolith in 2001 had dimensions in ratios of 1:4:9 [and continuing into other dimensions...]. Why the heck would you go to all the work of putting a monolith of the wrong shape out there?

Nobody prooved it has any relation to 2001. It's not even black, why do people even assume it must have some connection with that story?

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#486

Post by dredmorbius »

raihansaputra wrote: post #464
dredmorbius wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

44 bits. It's relatively well known that 33 distinct bits is enough to uniquely identify any individual person now alive on Earth.[1] Geospatially, assuming 10m resolution, 44 bits is enough to identify any unique location on Earth's land surface (46 bits buys you the oceans). Searching for a ~1m^2 monolith visually within a 10m^2 square is reasonable. GNU units: You have: ln((.3 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln…

64 bits definitely buys https://s2geometry.io/resources/s2cell_statistics.html https://s2geometry.io/devguide/s2cell_hierarchy

Interesting, thanks.

Relevant xkcds:

Coordinate Precision https://xkcd.com/2170/

Map of the Internet: https://xkcd.com/195/

xkcd'Splained:

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2170:_Coordinate_...

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/195:_Map_of_the_I...

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#487

Post by JoeDaDude »

fritzo wrote: post #451
JoeDaDude wrote: post #127

This reminds me of other "land art" installations around the country. Presumably, these are done with the landowners permission: The Lightning Field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lightning_Field Spiral Jetty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Jetty Negative Space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Negative_(artwork) Amarillo Ramp: https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/amarillo-ramp

Does anyone know what those wire grids are in East Palo Alto, just west of the landfill? I can't tell if they're art or synthetic aperture radar. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4464497,-122.1130144,156m/da...

My guess is that they are antennas related to the Palo Alto airport which is right next door. Being in a circular pattern points to VOR, though I could not locate any database, either VOR or AM/FM broadcast that would list that location.

The Palo Alto airport information [1] says: "+100 FT TRANSMISSION TWRS E OF ARPT".

[1] https://www.airnav.com/airport/kpao

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#489

Post by ericmay »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #460
ericmay wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can certainly have your own perspective, I just disagree 100% with it and will use whatever means I have to make sure that the tiny bits of nature we have left are preserved to the extent possible. Some aluminum "art" in the middle of nowhere is a perversion and should be garbage collected. That's my view, which I will use dollars and my vote toward.

We might just have agree to disagree. I have literally seen tens of thousands of pounds of garbage dumped on public land. The idea that some out of the way and moderately interesting art is a priority is laughable.

> I have literally seen tens of thousands of pounds of garbage dumped on public land.

Yes, and they shouldn't be.

> The idea that some out of the way and moderately interesting art is a priority is laughable.

I don't think it's that interesting, but besides that I don't follow your rationale. Because some people litter against the rules, we shouldn't clean up this thing someone put on federal lands? Even so, wouldn't large pieces of litter take priority over smaller ones simply due to human nature?

I really feel like you're stretching here. Frankly, it's interesting to watch people defend some thing they just found out about and have no attachment to.

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#490

Post by dahfizz »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #200
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, it was people like this that once fingered the wrong person for the Boston Marathon bombing. It's all well and good as long as we remember not to put too much stock in it when it really matters.

As an analyst, something in me twitches involuntarily at your response. By people like this you mean redditors doing internet sleuthing? But redditors doing internet sleuthing could be anyone; from detectives, to judges, to professional analysts, to trolls, to pr firms, to fraudsters and framers. The evidence they use can be anything from high quality to low/ fraudulent. And then we have the fact that the alternative…

>> It's all well and good as long as we remember not to put too much stock in it when it really matters.

> But redditors doing internet sleuthing could be anyone; from detectives, to judges, to professional analysts, to trolls, to pr firms, to fraudsters and framers.

I think you and GP agree. Reddit sleuthing is all good and fun but it should not be trusted at face value (or at all, really) when there are real people and real consequences on the line.

> I'd rather tell people to learn to judge evidence and the analytical thought that goes into making the conclusions.

Implied in this position is that you have to be skeptical of reddit sleuthing until you have a reason not to be. The problem is that people are _not_ skeptical of reddit sleuthing because there is a "We did it reddit!" attitude that the platform is super capable and should be believed by default. You and GP are both warning against that.

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