Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants

Initial Report Into Signal Cartel’s Survey of the Anoikis Cluster and the ‘Shattered Systems’ – report by A Dead Parrot (authorised for public release 9/24/119)

Ever since the Seyllin Incident and its related ‘Main Sequence Events’ that triggered the opening of the first wormholes in YC 111, New Eden scientists have been debating the physical location of the Anoikis Cluster relative to New Eden. As a result, several serious attempts to accurately map Anoikis have paved the way for what we know today.

The first major attempt to do so was conducted during YC113 as an Arek’Jaalan project led by the Intaki capsuleer-scientist Mark726, using the designation Project Compass. The Distant Stellar Object Data Capture (DSODC), using images captured in wormhole space from camera drones, relied on the principles of parallax and spectroscopy to determine just where in space each image was located. It attempted to “ascertain whether the same distant stellar or extra-galactic point sources could be identified in both Anoikis and New Eden” through space photography.

However, this early attempt incorrectly determined that New Eden was located in the center of the known universe and that the Anoikis Cluster surrounded it, like an outer shell.

Excerpt from the original Project Compass report

Following this attempt, with the discovery of the locator functionality of starbase control towers placed in space, Mark726 and Faulx launched Project Compass 2.0 which would again attempt to locate and map the Anoikis Cluster. This time, project researchers would use the triangulation of distance measurements collected from a small constellation of five control towers placed as far apart as possible in New Eden. Their conclusions were quite different (and contradictory) to those of Project Compass 1.0.

Project Compass 2.0 concluded that New Eden was in fact not at the center of the known universe surrounded by Anoikis, but instead, Anoikis was located in an entirely distinct area of space separated by a distance of almost 1,300 light years from New Eden.

Visual representation of the relative positions of the New Eden and Anoikis clusters, as determined by Project Compass 2.0

In addition, Project Compass 2.0 was actually able to determine a rough map of Anoikis itself, using a relatively small sampling of less than 300 systems located by painstakingly triangulating their distances from each control tower in the measurement array. As of 3/13/YC114, those control towers ceased providing distances to systems in Anoikis.

Disposition and distribution of star systems in the Anoikis Cluster as postulated during Project Compass 2.0

Some years later, during YC117, an independent researcher by the name of Alyxportur was able to put together a detailed static map of the Anoikis Cluster which appeared to confirm the findings of Project Compass 2.0. You can see, in his images below, the roughly hexagonal shape of the Anoikis Cluster, similar to the conclusions reached by Project Compass 2.0.

Alyxporter’s published map generated from independent research (prior to the discovery of the Thera system)

However, at that time, Alyxportur’s findings were criticized by the scientific community and he was in fact belittled by many who said he was merely repeating research that had already been done years earlier through Project Compass 2.0. But few actually comprehended the computational methods he used to produce his results. The Anoikis Cluster had not yet been mapped with that level of detail.

Unfortunately, Alyxportur may have been discouraged by the community’s unwillingness to appreciate his work and his research was abandoned, at least in the public eye.

It is important to note at this point that both Alyxportur and the researchers involved with the earlier Project Compass 2.0 completed their work using data obtained prior to the discovery of the Thera system, and were likely to be unaware at the time that they were only mapping what we now refer to as the Anoikis ‘main cluster’, as they had no maps, data, or even knowledge of the existence of Thera and the so-called ‘shattered systems’ that were discovered later.

Fast-forward to today. Through the work of Signal Cartel researchers including myself and hundreds of other Signal pilots engaged in ongoing deployments throughout the Anoikis Cluster, aided in no small part by discoveries made possible by the creation of Signal Cartel’s ALLISON navigational AI [1], a modern picture of the relative positions of the Anoikis Cluster, Thera, the shattered systems, and their combined spatial relationship to the New Eden Cluster are becoming clearer than they ever were. Who knows what future discoveries will unveil.

Based on the dataset gathered by Signal Cartel as described above, I therefore present below a preliminary hypothesis concerning the true, accurate spatial relationship between the Anoikis Cluster and the ‘shattered systems’. See the notes embedded in each document for further details on the measurement methods involved, together with expanded text on the overall hypothesis.

First: the Anoikis Cluster and its position relative to the ‘shattered systems’. The dataset indicates that the two clusters are not co-located at all, and are in fact separated by a considerable distance:

click for enlargement

Second: the positions of the ‘shattered systems’, the Thera system and the five ‘Drifter Hives’ relative to each other. Again, these star systems are separated from each other by a great distance, but appear to be co-located along a specific ‘flat plane’ with respect to the galactic centre [note: this is also true of the main Anoikis Cluster: neither can be considered a globular cluster]. There is also a tantalising pattern within the dataset that suggests a high degree of line-of-sight alignment between the ‘shattered systems’ and certain stars in the main Anoikis Cluster (see document text for further explanation).

click for enlargement

Further research and refinement of this dataset is ongoing, and more results will be published as and when reliable conclusions can be formed.

[ENDS]

Notes:

[1] The ALLISON construct is a prototype artificial intelligence that I designed, and it is installed on all Signal Cartel spacecraft as a matter of standard operating procedure. Its principal purpose is to enhance the capsuleer’s navigational situational awareness to unprecedented levels and has proved extremely successful. Its use during the project described above was crucial as it was effectively a form of parallel processing capability combined with ultra-long-baseline interferometry, as if several hundred Project Compasses were operating simultaneously.

The above paper is © A Dead Parrot. Attribution to external sources is given in the text. All opinions stated are those of the author. All rights reserved. The Project: ALLISON Phase 3 reports are © Cassandra Habalu.

Media Enquiries: for further information, feedback, or media bookings and interview requests, please contact A Dead Parrot via Signal Cartel management or please leave comments in the space provided below. We look forward to hearing from you.

It’s Changed

Editor’s Note: This post is cross-posted from the EvE-Scout Enclave forums and was originally published in June 2017.

I left [classified] and headed to HQ to get a new shirt to wear for non-capsule downtime.

Literally, I flew the 1,300 LY from [classified] by emerging from the hole in Hilaban, then another 14 LY to my hangar in Zoohen, just to get a new shirt. Is that indulgent and in fact evidence of Anoikis-dwellers’ skewed priorities? Have I spent too long in the dreamworld?

Zoohen regulars will know that New Eden – the New Eden – is only a few jumps away from Zoohen. I realised I haven’t been there this year (I try to go there at least once a year as a ritual) and I wanted to test something.

Since it was the middle of the day in NEST terms, and since I know most capsuleers don’t rise before noon, I expected, and got, a seamless and effortless transit up the long-abandoned and infrastructure-free lowsec pipe to the New Eden system. I even got a traffic control advisory at the Promised Land > New Eden stargate, as if I’d caught the gate crew napping at their posts, because, y’know, what the hell would anybody come here for at this hour?

There’s only one reason to come to this system  in this day and age:

The new cluster-wide, universal cam-drone upgrade we all got last month has changed the appearance of the EVE Gate anomaly. It hasn’t really changed at all, and an unaugmented baseline meathead viewing it through a window would only ever see a blinding white mass of heavenly light. To us, the resolution and fidelity and dynamic range at which we capsuleers are allowed to perceive it, means it appears more alive and more deadly than ever. It looked relatively static under the old system, but now we see field lines and what look like hot gas shock fronts, and its apparent magnitude changes every few minutes like a variable star:

The EVE Gate is 3.3 LY beyond the New Eden system, so those pulses in brightness all happened 3.3 years ago. If this huge flaw in spacetime changed tonight somehow, if it evaporated or fixed itself or whatever, then we wouldn’t know about it until the year YC122.

That is, unless the Sisters of EVE deigned to inform us first. I mean, does the SoE tell us nothing about what they’ve found out about that thing because they haven’t found anything out? Or are they as schtum about it as they are about those flotillas in Anoikis?

The trouble with coming here, to New Eden, is you always leave it with more questions than you arrived with, as well as a headache after contemplating how the EVE Gate relates to human existence.

For the record I haven’t left the New Eden system yet, as I’m ‘typing’ this through the neural interface with my ship that’s docked in SFRIM’s citadel. I might stay jacked-in and program a sleep cycle as I’ve been here before: this lot based here are devout and seem to cross the line between science and religion and back again depending on what mood they’re in. They worship that thing out there like a god even though they know exactly what it is. This citadel is their church. It scares me a bit.

Besides, you can’t get decent coffee this far from highsec.

[ENDS]

 

© Cassandra Habalu – check out more from Cass at her blog: It’s Not Personal, It’s Strictly Business