Back Story

Science has done a very good job describing the physics of the world around us. What scientists call the laws and theories of physics, describe extremely well almost all the phenomenon that we can observe in the universe. Our understanding is not complete but never-the-less, it is an amazing accomplishment that has occurred quite recently in the history of humans. Currently, there is a tremendous amount of scientific research happening in all fields, motivated by the need to know, by the fame of discovery or by the financial rewards of bringing new products to market.  For better or for worse, what an amazing time to be here to witness these achievements.

I classify myself as a scientist and as an experimenter. When I find a gap in my understanding of how the universe works,  I like to read up on it. Wikipedia is a wonderful resource. Almost always, I discover that others have already had these same questions and there are good explanations available that describe the answer to as deep of a level as one dares to go. The language and math of science is not easy mastered and is, at times, intimidating. I sometimes feel the need to do a simple experiment to prove to myself that what I read is, indeed true. Skepticism is a good thing; it keeps our beliefs true to Reality. It has been my observation, that new discoveries often have come from experiments that do not entirely give the expected results. My interests have been admittedly whimsical, but I think it is important to let your muse take you where she wants to go.

Randomness

By Greg L at the English language Wikipedia,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1325234

I have long thought about the concept of randomness. In the summer of 1966 I took an experimental FORTRAN programming class at the local High school. We communicated by teletype with the IBM computer located at UCLA. Programs were recorded on one inch wide punched paper tape. One of the projects was to write a random walk program. If you did a good job of generating random numbers, the random movements (left-right-up-down) would inevitably bring the printed trail back to near its starting point. Later in college, I used COBAL punch card decks to model predator-prey populations. I modeled how individuals might move about randomly until predator and prey discovered each other and watched how the populations would change in sinusoidal cycles until the simple systems would enviably collapse. Employed as a CLS for 40 years, I have used statistical analysis of control results to generate the gaussian curve of random measurement error.  Indeed, randomness is all about us: in the movement of the perfume molecules in air, in the Brownian movement of particles under the microscope and in the background noise of an AM radio. In this universe, it appears as though things are easily stirred-up but difficult to become organized again. Entropy is a measure of the amount of disorganization that systems contain, where randomized systems have more entropy. Some think the forward arrow of time is fixed due to entropy. Cosmic stuff.

Also in 1966, I received a crystal radio set as a Christmas present. With it, I could easily hear the KTMS AM broadcast from the towers located about two miles from my house. The signal was so strong that I found I could still hear the signal if I removed the coil and capacitor parts of the tuning circuit. Eventually, I found that if I wired the cat whisker diode directly across the ear piece, I could hear the local broadcast by merely touching a single lead of the headset, to a ground. AM radio is not very popular now. Devices have utilized higher frequencies with greater bandwidth. Receiving devices can utilize digital signals from multiple local cell sources. I wonder what this trend looks like when viewed far away in space. I would bet that the huge number of weak digital transmissions would look a lot like random noise. Add data encryption to the mix and would you even be able to tell there were signals emanating from earth?

No Signals from Space

In 1950, Enrico Fermi publicly wondered why intelligent life had not been discovered elsewhere in the universe. The Drake equation estimates of current Milky Way technological civilizations run from less than one to 2.8x10^8. Yet sixty-six years later, Fermi's Paradox still looms. The negative result has not been for a lack of trying; there have been decades of SETI searches. Regardless of the eventual answer, that answer will have extraordinary implications.

Tom Weller 1985

How would an advanced civilization communicate between outposts that were light years apart? EM waves are painfully slow on a galactic scale. I wonder if somewhere in this universe, there is a technology that allows a more efficient form of communication. Think of how fast our technologies have advanced. What could we develop given another 10,000 years? What would this technology be like? If there was a better way to communicate over long distances, then it would be the preferred way to communicate. It could be one explanation why we have not heard anything while listening for radio waves from space. This imagined alien communication technology would cover vast distances and contain trillions of messages from billions of sources. I am envisioning a cosmic party line where everyone could hear anyone's messages. I image these messages could be digital in nature and would be encrypted. Mixing all those encrypted signals together would produce what could appear as a random signal. I am not talking about detecting EM waves, but rather looking at sources of locally produced apparently random signals. We have a name for that kind of thing in our technology; it is called noise.

Noise

Noise is a big nuisance in electronic circuits. Engineers work hard to design electronic circuits that amplify very small signals while preserving said signal's fidelity against contaminating random noise. Many electronic components produce noise; even the common resistor produces random noise as individual electrons wander about through their quantum landscape. Reversed biased Zener diodes are an excellent source of random noise. Zener noise signals can be used to make soothing white noise audio outputs. Just as white light is made up of many colors mixed together, white Zener noise contains a wide mixture of frequencies all the way onto the radio range. I have read that the Zener noise can come from several different quantum mechanisms depending how the component is manufactured and how the device is used.

So the question that nags at me is, could an encrypted message be embedded in an apparently random noise signal? I would guess, yes it could. I can imagine a clever programmer  producing a data string that could pass any test for randomness, yet still contain a complex message. An example might be a binary string of a few billion digits of the number Pi. Without knowing that you were looking at the number Pi, the string could pass any test for randomness, yet it is not. A message could be imbedded by changing some of the apparently random digits to other random digits. Detecting what digits had changed would decode into the message. So is there a way to tell if an apparently random signal contains information? I do not think so. And this is exactly what disturbs me.

Actually, what I asked above, may have been a trick question. I believe there is no way to tell if a single random signal contains coded information without having the key, but if the same message is simultaneously encoded into each of two apparently random signals that have different keys, then would that be detectable? I am not trying to decode the encrypted message itself; I am just wondering if it could be demonstrated that the same message was present in both signals. How about three signals, or a million?

If the same signal were present in just any two random noise signals, then something like that would have surely been detected a long time ago. Indeed, the same signal cropping up over and over again in a wire, is the basis of radio reception. But what about the same message, coded with two different keys, producing two different random appearing signals... for that, I'm not so sure anyone would have noticed or looked. It is this fanciful idea, totally unfounded by fact, which I would like to disprove. I aim to design an experiment that would show that these types of signals are not imbedded in electronic random noise.

A Way Forward

I want to put to rest this crazy idea that a coded message can be hidden within a random noise signal. How would I know a coded message if I saw it? The answer is, that I would see the same signal on two different detectors. So whatever I eventually build, I must build at least two of them. The detectors/receivers must be shielded from outside RF signals and light; the signals I want to detect are produced locally inside zener diodes. The signals could be directional and I want to investigate all directions with the detector. I want the detector to be analog in design. The analog output would be sampled by a microprocessor and values stored on my computer for later analysis. I have thought of dozens of strategies for detecting coded signals. I could use one, two, three or more zener signals. I could add, subtract or multiply the raw signals. I could compare the local frequencies or timing of the zener events. I could apply frequency filters and compare outputs. I could compare the areas under the zener curves. Compare the height of the zener pulse. I have seen what appears to be a smaller random signal riding on the back of the main zener signal when the applied voltage is just at the zener threshold. I could digitize any of the above comparisons and apply Boolean logic to them. One zener output could be used as a decryption key for another output. The possibilities are endless and I expect that by the time I finish running experiments, I will not have seen any correlation between two detectors looking at two different random signals. I am hoping to gain some solace there, regardless of how convoluted or misdirected my path.