Claim: Faraday Cage Experiment with radios contacts Non-Human Intelligence

Mick West

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Source: https://vimeo.com/511418639


One of seven radios is chosen, a message is broadcast on it, and then that one radio starts getting bursts of static, while others do not.

Later it is put in several "Faraday" mylar bags, and continues to get the static.

This is claims to be contact with Non-Human intelligence, but I wonder if it's just a problem with the radio. They seem to be different models of Baofeng, a brand of radio that has some problem with intermittent static.

Does anyone have experience with this type of radio, and what could cause the static?
 
The mylar bags apparently won't block the radio.

Here's a 2017 forum post by long-time board member lobanz at https://www.survivalistboards.com/threads/my-faraday-cage-test-is-this-bogus-or-not.666305/ (excerpted):

I have 8 Baofeng UV-5R radios. 2 of them we use around the farm. But the other 6 have just been sitting in their cardboard boxes . Figured it was time to protect them.

So, I can pack 2 radios in a standard 1 gal paint can as the outer container -- seams and lid taped with aluminum tape.

I also used mylar bags because they have proven to provide some shielding (some of them anyway). In the experiment, I used two small bags (for which I didn't have shielding ratings), and one large bag that has a "EMI Shielding (MIL-B-81705-Rev-C)" rating of ">40 db between 1 & 10 GHz". [..]

In the experiment I used two Baofeng UV-5R radios. From what I have been able to determine, these have about 130 db of dynamic range at most frequencies (see attached doc where a guy did some testing -- but I could be misreading it), which I THINK means that in order to keep the radio in the faraday cage from receiving the signal, I have to provide at least 130 db of shielding. I went under that assumption, anyway.

So here's what I did.
  • Turned on both radios and turn the volume all the way up on the one that went inside the shielding materials.
  • Put the receiving radio in 1 unrated mylar bag and sealed the opening with aluminum tape: radio received transmission loud and clear.
  • Put the sealed bag in a second unrated mylar bag and sealed the opening with aluminum tape: radio received transmission, loud and clear, but with maybe a hint of attenuation -- a little weaker and not as prone to feedback at close range.
  • Put the two mylar bags with radio inside a 1 gal metal paint can and seal up the lid with aluminum tape: could still hear the transmission well but with quite a bit more perceived attenuation.
  • Put paint can in 40 db rated mylar bag WITHOUT sealing it up -- top of bag completely open: the signal completely blocked IF the transmitting radio was placed at the side of the bag, but the signature was NOT blocked if the transmitting radio was placed at the open end of the bag.

Content from External Source
 
what could cause the static?
Static is just an acoustic waveform called "noise", you can transmit it like regular audio.
One of seven radios is chosen,
Not chosen at random, though. They could have been planning to use this all along.Note also that it is out of shot when it's being demonstrated to cause feedback.

I don't think this would be hard to fake at all, if this is a hoax.
 
These bags are not blocking sufficiently. This, because the metal layer is only microns thick. Not enough.
Of course, if in the video they would use another Faraday cage (a proper one), they could check that. But yeah, no.
 
The fact that these radios all show the same frequency means nothing, because they all have CTCSS (and DCS which does the same thing digitally).
Article:
In telecommunications, Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System or CTCSS is one type of in-band signaling that is used to reduce the annoyance of listening to other users on a shared two-way radio communications channel. (See squelch.) It is sometimes referred to as tone squelch. It does this by adding a low frequency audio tone to the voice. Where more than one group of users is on the same radio frequency (called co-channel users), CTCSS circuitry mutes those users who are using a different CTCSS tone or no CTCSS. It is sometimes referred to as a sub-channel, but this is a misnomer because no additional channels are created. All users with different CTCSS tones on the same channel are still transmitting on the identical radio frequency, and their transmissions interfere with each other; however; the interference is masked under most (but not all) conditions. The CTCSS feature also does not offer any security.

The fact that they do the feedback test with the previously chosen radio out of shot means they could absolutely fake this whole thing with an 8th radio; with radio F on a different CTCSS channel than the others, it's not a problem to send to just that radio on that frequency.
 
just dawned on me, a reason some walkie talkies might be picking up static and others not is because they may hall have different squelch settings. https://baofengradio.us/blog/recommended-setup-before-using-your-baofeng-uv-5r-v2/
The thing is though that they choose a walkie at random, and we do not see them change the squelch settings of this one. And as the frequency is all the same, I wonder how this can be done (lets leave video editing alone). Of course, we have to consider, that the person on the right did not choose that one "randomly". I hope someone with lots of experience with walkietalkies can chime in here.

ps, these radio's don't really have large reach right? Less than 0.5 km for sure.
 
The thing is though that they choose a walkie at random, and we do not see them change the squelch setting of this one.
They DON'T choose a radio at random, Marcus chooses F, (around 2:40) and he can decide which one to choose. In a magic trick, for this to be "random", you would need an audience member (who is not a plant), but in a trick with two magicians, and one magicians chooses it, there is nothing random about it. There's not even a pretense of randomness where they draw a letter out of a hat.

Then at 4:30 and already before , the radio is out of shot. If I was hoaxing this, I would have an identical radio F prepared with a different setting.

What would really help would be to see the displays of the radios up close, I'm going to check for that.
 
The displays look like that selection feature is not active (no CT or DCS displayed), so that idea of mine is a dud.

Handbook picture of the display:
image.jpeg

I notice that radio F also has a big letter F on the back, so if Marcus was instructed to choose that one specifically, it would have been veryeasy to do.

I don't understand why that radio has to leave the shot at all. If this was a magic trick, this would make me super suspicious.
 
The frequency range that the signal is supposed to encompass does not match the signal that can be heard in the video. I don't know how to retrieve that image with the kind of clarity shown in the video.
image.png

How it looks in the video (above) vs. what we found (below)
image.jpeg
It also doesn't look like the same text?
 
It looks to me a problem specific to those models of radio. They are not receiving any radio transmission, there's just some problem in the circuitry which occasionaly lets out a burst of noise. It also seems this becomes more probable the more the radio has been powered on, this pointing to some effect of temperature on some internal device (had I to debug this, I'd start from the power supply). If this is the case, putting the radio inside a bag will increase its internal temperature and the probability of the bursts.

Radio F was not randomly selected at all, and radio E 'selected' itself by emitting audible bursts after some time from power-up, nothing strange.
 
They DON'T choose a radio at random, Marcus chooses F, (around 2:40) and he can decide which one to choose. In a magic trick, for this to be "random", you would need an audience member (who is not a plant), but in a trick with two magicians, and one magicians chooses it, there is nothing random about it. There's not even a pretense of randomness where they draw a letter out of a hat.
Well, I have to start somewhere, and that is to first try and trust what they claim. They claim to be honest in choosing randomly. Can we prove they did not?

Just to make sure here, I am the first to say this is all bullcrap and CE6 shit, but I want to make a solid case. But I am sure you knew that ;)
 
Article:
Since the bags failed two out of the three tests, it raised the question: why didn’t they block the radio frequency better?

RESPONSE FROM SELLER:
I would like to address your concerns if possible to help clear up questions:
1. Our listing does not claim to block cell phones or walkie talkies – these are EMP bags for protecting items from EMP frequencies causing damage to electronics (they are not bags blocking cell signals – we do carry a full line of privacy bags if this is what you’re after)



Source: https://youtu.be/VYRetP0OTS8?t=163
 
It looks to me a problem specific to those models of radio. They are not receiving any radio transmission, there's just some problem in the circuitry which occasionaly lets out a burst of noise. It also seems this becomes more probable the more the radio has been powered on, this pointing to some effect of temperature on some internal device (had I to debug this, I'd start from the power supply). If this is the case, putting the radio inside a bag will increase its internal temperature and the probability of the bursts.

do you have a source for this? I believe you, since ham radio guy reviews say these are cheap little Made in China devices (you get what you pay for*), but some proof would be nice.

*they say they are good enough devices for beginners and at the price point they are basically disposable when they crap out.
 
Article:
Baofeng uv5r v2 keeps receiving static randomly
The squelch opens on and it plays static for half a second squelch isat 4 what could cause this


jquagga
·
3y
http://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_Squelch.php

That link will basically fix this if you have a programming cable.



from the miklor link
Article:
The factory's internal squelch level settings have long been known to have little or no impact on the actual squelch range. The smallest noise burst would easily open the squelch regardless of setting 0 thru 9. Until now, it was one of those little 'quirks' you just needed to tolerate
 
RESPONSE FROM SELLER:
I would like to address your concerns if possible to help clear up questions:
1. Our listing does not claim to block cell phones or walkie talkies – these are EMP bags for protecting items from EMP frequencies causing damage to electronics (they are not bags blocking cell signals – we do carry a full line of privacy bags if this is what you’re after)[/article]

Here is an interesting article about the notion of non-perfect Faraday "cages".

https://physicsworld.com/a/are-faraday-cages-less-effective-than-previously-thought/

Of course, a bag with a tiny thin aluminium layer can never be perfect.
 
Well, I have to start somewhere, and that is to first try and trust what they claim. They claim to be honest in choosing randomly. Can we prove they did not?
Yes. We can see there was nothing random involved in the process.
Marcus chose a radio that was clearly identified to him.
You can of course go with the implied claim that it would have worked with any of the other radios, but there is no evidence that it would have.

I've been very careful to say that IF this was a hoax, THEN this is how it could have been done. Obviously it might not be hoax, and in this case, they ought to make a deal with the James Randi foundation, invite them to their location, and repeat the experiment with a truly randomly chosen radio set (and radios provided by the foundation). They'd stand to make quite a bit of money.

some effect of temperature on some internal device
That's another reason why that radio should never have been out of view.
 
It looks to me a problem specific to those models of radio. They are not receiving any radio transmission, there's just some problem in the circuitry which occasionaly lets out a burst of noise. It also seems this becomes more probable the more the radio has been powered on, this pointing to some effect of temperature on some internal device (had I to debug this, I'd start from the power supply). If this is the case, putting the radio inside a bag will increase its internal temperature and the probability of the bursts.
This all seems very plausible to me.

The radio chosen (F) seems to be the oldest one, a plain UV-5R - which might be more susceptible to the issue. But then they are all very cheap and similar radios.

2021-08-25_08-39-20.jpg
 
The frequency range that the signal is supposed to encompass does not match the signal that can be heard in the video. I don't know how to retrieve that image with the kind of clarity shown in the video.
A tweaked version of the Python script (available on request) provided a clearer picture.

5:33
image.jpeg
5:34
image.jpeg
Retrieved from preceding audio in that video:
image.png
 
I've been very careful to say that IF this was a hoax, THEN this is how it could have been done. Obviously it might not be hoax, and in this case, they ought to make a deal with the James Randi foundation, invite them to their location, and repeat the experiment with a truly randomly chosen radio set (and radios provided by the foundation). They'd stand to make quite a bit of money.
i'm not having a problem with the coincidence of him picking a particular radio that's in front of him. But i'm not confident this is the first take of this experiment.
One, because why would aliens be listening to everything this particular human does 24/7? Unless by "alien" he means "guardian angel".
Two, they both seemed super thrilled and energetic (sarcasm). Granted it's possible they just smoked a joint or gotten out of a long sauna, but still.
Three, Murphy's Law says your experiment probably won't work on the first "take". It's like taking your car to the mechanic for that mystery noise and it stops doing the noise as you hand the keys to the mechanic.
 
i'm not having a problem with the coincidence of him picking a particular radio that's in front of him. But i'm not confident this is the first take of this experiment.
One, because why would aliens be listening to everything this particular human does 24/7? Unless by "alien" he means "guardian angel".
Two, they both seemed super thrilled and energetic (sarcasm). Granted it's possible they just smoked a joint or gotten out of a long sauna, but still.
Three, Murphy's Law says your experiment probably won't work on the first "take". It's like taking your car to the mechanic for that mystery noise and it stops doing the noise as you hand the keys to the mechanic.

Agreed, I thought the same. Especially obvious at the moment the noise is heard and he says "oh, that's quick!"..

By they way.
I assume the aliens are getting a bit annoyed with us by sending this bloody boring CE6 message all the time?
 
Mauro said:

It looks to me a problem specific to those models of radio. They are not receiving any radio transmission, there's just some problem in the circuitry which occasionaly lets out a burst of noise. It also seems this becomes more probable the more the radio has been powered on, this pointing to some effect of temperature on some internal device (had I to debug this, I'd start from the power supply). If this is the case, putting the radio inside a bag will increase its internal temperature and the probability of the bursts.
do you have a source for this? I believe you, since ham radio guy reviews say these are cheap little Made in China devices (you get what you pay for*), but some proof would be nice.

*they say they are good enough devices for beginners and at the price point they are basically disposable when they crap out.
Well, the proof that they are not receving any radio signal is in the videoclip itself: the other radios are receiving nothing (*), removing the antenna does not affect the noise bursts, nor they are affected by putting the radio in shielded bags (not that I can comment on the efficacy of those bags, but they surely do something).

So the noise bursts are something internal to the two radios. From now on I only have speculations: what probably happens is that the squelch circuit/software decides it's receiving something while it isn't and this gives out the noise bursts (it's just internal electronics noise, much amplified). This could happen for a myriad of reasons and it seems Baofeng's radio are prone to squelch problems, so much that some guys have developed an extension to a program to be able to modify the 'inner' (**) squelch settings:
The factory's internal squelch level settings have long been known to have little or no impact on the actual squelch range. The smallest noise burst would easily open the squelch regardless of setting 0 thru 9. Until now, it was one of those little 'quirks' you just needed to tolerate.

But no longer... Through the efforts of Jim KC9HI and the CHIRP development team, this has become a thing of the past. A new 'Service Settings' tab has been added to CHIRP which allows you to alter the range of squelch settings.
https://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_Squelch.php

Anyone know someone in the radio amateurs community? They could be a prime source of informations and on-hand expertise I think.



(*) From the videoclips all the radios display 144.100MHz. On the display they also show another number in the ~400+Mhz range, which is different between different radios. I assume all radios were actually receiving at 144.100MHz but this is difficult to say, the manual is not that clear. I found this explanation on an amateur radio site (in Italian, and it seems to be a translation from somewhere else):
ha un solo VFO quindi non è in grado di ricevere contemporaneamente su due frequenza (non è
mica economico per niente), quelle che appaio sul display non sono altro che due memorie, e
comunque il tasto A/B serve appunto per indirizzare la trasmissione da un parte o da l’altra,
https://www.radioamatore.info/attac...manuale_italiano_e_trucchi_by_iw2bsf_2014.pdf

Translation: it only has one VFO (variable frequency oscillator) so it cannot receive at the same time on two different frequencies (it's a cheap device), the numbers on the display are just two preset memories , and the A/B key is used to send the transmission to one or the other.


(**) These are the internal squelch settings for a similar model, I guess one can program the squelch threshold independently in twenty frequency bands, or something like that:
https://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_Squelch.php
 
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I assume the aliens are getting a bit annoyed with us by sending this bloody boring CE6 message all the time?
I expect that if they somehow learned to read and understand English, they must already have access to more interesting reading material.
 
From the videoclips all the radios display 144.100MHz. On the display they also show another number in the ~400+Mhz range, which is different between different radios. I assume all radios were actually receiving at 144.100MHz but this is difficult to say, the manual is not that clear.
The radios can operate in the VHF and UHF bands:
VHF:144MHz-146MHz (Rx/Tx).UHF:430MHz-440MHz (Rx/Tx)
I believe the small pip next to the band indicates which one is active.
If both are active, the letter S should be visible.
 
By they way.
I assume the aliens are getting a bit annoyed with us by sending this bloody boring CE6 message all the time?
i thought that too. but the radios "responded" to the "love,love,love" message (25 mins in) not the "look how cool we are" one. (more evidence for the guardian angel)

add: speaking of love,love,love ....should i make a "50 shades of greys" joke?
 
Especially obvious at the moment the noise is heard and he says "oh, that's quick!"..
and Markus jumps right on "were going to turn down the volumne". I'm not knocking them, obviously noone wants to watch a half hour video of nothing happening.
 
There are many issues here, I think more than a single post can really support. Below is a list, happy to discuss any of these in more depth.

  • The term "faraday bag" is inaccurate and is the brand name rather than an accurate reference to the bag's effect on electro-magnetic radiation (in the RF band or any other). A true faraday cage involves a lot more than a few mils of mylar shielding. It's unclear if they still sell the exact bag being used here (I've linked to the only similar one from the vendor) but it's likely that this bag is only rated to provide -40 dB of attenuation from 1-40 GHz. These radios operate well below that frequency band. That said, these are likely to produce some attenuation at 144 MHz and honestly I'm willing to accept his assertion that seven bags will produce enough attenuation to lower the signal from a nearby 4-5 W transmitter below a cheap receiver's thermal noise floor. Source: https://shop.faradaydefense.com/product/3pc-18x28-xx-large-multi-use-esd-emp-70mil-faraday-bag/
  • The CE-6 message is a lot of audio to pipe through that poor thing (about 45 seconds). I can't imagine that those radios are designed for that sort of use and so it's likely to produce unusual failure conditions. That's also just a long time transmitting continuously for a little hand-held unit like that, so I doubt the engineers designed it to adequately dissipate the amount of heat that generated.
  • The primary source of noise within reception gear is thermal noise in the receiver itself, this produces a thermal noise floor which is a component of the overall noise floor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_floor). Depending upon external conditions (weather, other RF emitters, etc...) the thermal noise floor may or may not be the actual noise floor seen at any given time or place. Source: https://archive.org/details/NEETSModules/NEETS Module 17 - Radio-Frequency Communications Principles/page/n43/mode/2up (p. 44 of PDF, p 2-10 of text, Receiver Characteristics, Noise)
  • It seems likely 144.1 MHz should be relatively clean from other RF emitters as clearly there's no traffic on that freq in their location and it's right at the lower edge of a free use band with the band below it reserved for government use. Additionally, I'd expect external noise producing unintended reception to show on all radios. Source: https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/january_2016_spectrum_wall_chart.pdf
  • Marcus's statement "it shouldn't be going off" is based upon some preconceptions about how radios actually work based upon a fairly naive mental model. Particularly, "shouldn't" here seems to rest upon the unspoken assertion that "a receiver should respond only to external RF energy" which is a reasonable assertion but not always true when you enter the world of actual radios, especially cheap junk like this.
  • Removing the antenna will remove antenna gain from the link budget. This will effectively reduce the noise floor from atmospheric factors (as well as any received signals). I'm curious if he might be inducing some kind of failure mode in the radio's dynamic squelch, if one is present (I'm not sure one is, but given the radio's internal construction it seems likely).
  • Around 15:48, Mark "...then the intensity of the transmission tends to increase over time." I disagree that the unit is receiving a transmission but I think the remark about intensity increasing over time is significant: that sounds to me like either a rising thermal noise floor that the internal squelch is having trouble handling or some kind of failure state in the radio that worsens over time likely having to do with power supply or thermal issues though possibly also with the logic running on the chip operating the radio.

The continued activity on the radio within seven mylar bags is conclusive proof to me that Mark's induced some internal failure state within the radio.

There's some pretty obvious flaws in logic here, particularly assuming perfect operation by cheap equipment. Also, there's an a priori assumption that the radio will only generate audio activity when interacted with by some outside force and ruling out the possibility of a failure state either in the logic or the electronics. A simple application of Occam makes me think that internal malfunction is the far more likely cause of this behavior than something else.

The most interesting thing to me is that it looks like whatever the failure state is, it can be induced over the air (keep in mind that the other radios are all receiving what radio F transmits, and at really high energy levels due to their proximity to the transmitting unit).

I'm also curious if feedback is at all important here in creating the preconditions or initial conditions of the failure state. I'm not at all sure Mark realizes what he's really doing, he could honestly believe what he's saying and just be making serious errors of logic in his analysis of the likely causes. Naturally, a video going "hey, take a look at this weird failure state I can induce in the Baofeng UV-5R" wouldn't be as eye catching to most people
 
How did you arrive at that conclusion?
Thanks for pointing out my elision, I should have explained why I think that.

Radio "E" begins to experience some kind of internal failure state (provided we accept that the radios are all tuned to the same frequency with equivalent squelch settings) despite not having been transmitted upon (so long as we accept that there's no really deceptive shenanigans going on off screen, which I'm willing to do).

Of course, the alternate possibility is that this failure state will simply occur and worsen over time, but given the reports of issues with problems with intermodulation reported on some sites*, it seems more likely to me that this may be induced. Granted, that's just my impression, I can't provide a particularly strong argument that that's the case. It would be marginally interesting to test this but given that I don't own any Baofeng radios and would rather spend my money on other gear I likely won't.

I'm not sure how widely understood it is in many circles that radios like these are complex, software based state machines now and not just a largely electrical device with a transistor rather than a crystal and a far more limited number of likely states. Certainly when my computer gets in a weird state I don't assume it's communications from an intelligent being but more likely an operator issue or logic issue.

* E.g. "The Baofeng UV-5R radios on our bikes seem absurdly sensitive to intermodulation interference" source: https://softsolder.com/2019/08/04/baofeng-uv-5r-squelch-settings/ but there's several more if one just searches for it. It's also possible that this isn't true intermodulation by a failure state induced by some other condition. The fact that there is some kind of failure state well known among hobbiest is more pertinent to this than the exact cause of the failure. I'm not convinced this source knows that it was really intermodulation causing the problem but given his ability to correct the problem he seems to have a decent handle on part of it.
 
A tweaked version of the Python script (available on request) provided a clearer picture.

5:33

5:34
image.jpeg
Retrieved from preceding audio in that video:

Slightly off-topic: But can anyone explain the rationale to me about aliens being supposed to figure out electron mass, Rydberg constant and the magnetic momentum (of hydrogen?) without a formulary? Assuming we forget about all the other esoteric woo-woo contained in the message.
 
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It's not a "first contact" type of message anyway, more like esoteric spam -- and obviously not directed at aliens, but at the humans sending it (or watching it being sent).

If you think about it rationally, it is literally like looking at 'grown-up' kids playing with walkie-talkies in the company of their pet dog and trying to make contact with aliens. While still behaving according to their naive childish preconceptions. Meaning that they assume that the aliens have the same mental models (English language, Arabic numerals, Western science formalism) as us. The Voyager disc was at least relying upon geometric patterns, for which we can rationally assume that at least any other kind of ET civilization would have a theory of geometry that could enable them to decode these. Makes me wonder whether "the phenomenon" would also enjoy some Aphex Twin songs.
 
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A broader question would be how they expect anyone to recover their vocoding scheme from what they sent. More thoughtful efforts involve signals that have some sort of bootstrapping protocol so that an intelligent analyst without significant prior knowledge of Earth could plausibly recover the basic coding scheme and then extrapolate more complicated modulation schemes. This message appears to lack that.
 
A broader question would be how they expect anyone to recover their vocoding scheme from what they sent.
The way the message is retrieved is a really common way to visualize a frequency spectrum that ought to be culture-independent. If this was sent as AM, you could even retrieve it from the raw radio frequency, but I don't think it would work so well with un-demodulated FM.

I don't know why you call this "vocoding", as it doesn't do "voice encoding"; I've seen this referred to as "spectrogram".
 
I don't think the encoding of that image is particularly easy to recover without any prior assumption of knowledge of human cultures and communications schemes. It seems to lack much of the thought that one can find from sources like Callimahos (https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/docu...munications-extraterrestrial-intelligence.pdf) who had some experience with analysis of signals the content of which was not known (but who did have access to all sorts of prior knowledge about things like language and writing system), Minsky (https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-04/page/n127/mode/2up?view=theater) who had deeply examined issues of cognitive systems, or Drake's Arecibo message (https://www.fourmilab.ch/goldberg/setimsg.html) which is behind the state of the art today.

You are correct, I dashed that off haphazardly and I'm actually talking about the opposite of a vocoder - an image encoder. Spectrogram would be the display, I'm talking about the encoding of the image into audio. Of course, faxes do this, but I don't know that this technically qualifies as fax since it's not using any of the actual fax standards. I flipped throuh my Newton's today and couldn't locate a specific term so I suppose "image encoder" works.
 
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