The story apparently started on March 5 of last year, when an envelope addressed simply to "Fermilab" arrived there. In the envelope was a single sheet of paper with strange markings, apparently in code (click on it to see it larger):
An even higher resolution version can be found here. An article in Fermilab Today, today, indicates that the top and bottom sections with the I II and III marks have been decoded to read FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE and EMPLOYEE NUMBER BASSE SIXTEEN Symmetry magazine's online site has an article on it, and you can find links to the decryption, and sort of follow the logic so far. The amount of stuff on the net is expanding rapidly today...but I think it has not yet been fully decoded. Firstly, who is Frank Shoemaker? He was a faculty member at Princeton for many years, and made many contributions to experiments at Fermilab, including to the one I worked on for my thesis back in the 1980's. He was a very genial and fun colleague, great with electronics and hardware. He was also known for designing and building demonstration spark chambers that are to be found in various physics departments and museums, and give a vivid image of cosmic ray muons passing through. Frank is now retired (and asks not to be disturbed as a result of all this). Hmmm...so what would Frank consider noise? As a particle physicist, we think noise is anything that our detectors say is a particle or a real signal when in fact it was not. For example a random coincidence, or an upward fluctuation of a background would be called "noise". As for the bottom section, every Fermilab employee and user since 1967 (?) or so has been issued an ID with a sequential number; mine is V02833, for example. The V means "visitor". It used to be V2833 before they got to five digits. Just above the bottom section are three symbols. The second and third are apparently decoded by the middle section to read "FC". So does this mean the Fermilab ID number S00252? I believe that is the ID of Pierre Piroue (also of Princeton!) and also now retired but apparently denies being the author. There is also speculation that the first of the three symbols is part of the Fermilab user ID number, if it's not "S". And why "BASSE" and not "BASE"? And what is that whole middle section for? Is it a key, part of the message, or both? So...it's a mystery! Any ideas?
