Ever heard of Palo Alto CARET Labs? Nope, neither had anyone else until “Isaac” posted about his experiences at “PACL” in the mid-1980s as part of a team trying to turn “extraterrestrial technology” taken from “crash sites” into consumer goodies (such as a personal anti-gravity machine, apparently) for our sated materialist society.

So far, so mainstream UFO subculture: but what moves Isaac’s story into the A-list of recent UFO narratives is the set of lovingly-constructed images accompanying it. Some of these show machines (like a junkyard engine with neatly stencilled-on white lettering), while others are extracts from technical report “PACL Q4-86” (though why smuggle out a redacted version?) showing abstract representations of octal software / hardware with wonderfully obfuscated descriptions (e.g. “Isolated view of a three-node AB-type semaphore cascade, extending from an exterior vertex of an octal junction”).

isaac-caret-diagram

There’s a ton of online discussion of Isaac’s images, nowadays mostly centring on whether Adobe Illustrator or Adobe AutoCAD was used to create his pretty diagrams (I’d say Adobe Illustrator, with lots of text and element reuse to make it seem like more than it actually is).

Though I’m not a ufologist (“Men In Black” is about as close as I get), what I like here is his funky alien alphabet – equal parts Star Fleet and Japanese (Kana). For all Isaac’s talk that this expresses a ‘non-compiled alien symbolic programming language’ (yeah, riiiight), it closely resembles a European monoalphabetic cipher in the following basic ways:-

  • There seems to be an explicit numbering system
  • There seem to be a Romance-language-size character set
  • There seems to be a sharp language-like distribution to the symbols

Hence, I predict that the UFO hoaxer created a simple A-Z/0-9 alien font in Adobe Illustrator and just typed a load of technical-looking nonsense along lots of curved paths. For example, here are some of the number-like text fragments from various pages:-

isaac-caret-numbers

To my eyes, this gives the impression of someone cut-and-pasting nonsense numbers – I’d predict that the shapes either side of the repeated string on the left are ‘(‘ and ‘)’ respectively (they reappear in matched pairs elsewhere in the diagrams), that the left pair of strings each reads “(5604)”, and that the other two strings encipher ’12’ and ‘160’. Note that I’m guessing those leading digits are 1’s, on the basis that Benford’s Law probably also holds true on alien worlds. 🙂

If you’re interested in trying to crack this for yourself, feel free to download pages 119, 120, 121, 122, and 123 from Isaac’s Fortune City pages, and see how far you can get. Good luck! 🙂

21 thoughts on ““Alien” cipher language…?

  1. Wow! Thanks, Nick! I wonder if he knew Bob Lazar?

    There’s a lot there, but my very first thought: the gadget shown in PACL Q4-86 Report Photo 4.1-4 looks like a Curta calculator, with the “alien” character set.

  2. Rene Zandbergen on November 20, 2009 at 9:00 am said:

    Great stuff!

    It is clear that ‘we are not alone’.

    What I mean is: us Voynich researchers.

    Browsing through the Net on this topic shows that weird theories and
    never-ending discussions abound, and in these terms the UFO people
    are beating us hands down 🙂

    I like this video:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZTtoIH9RLw

    Rene

  3. They may beat us on quantity of madness, but on quality? Never! 🙂

  4. I certainly wondered about the scale of that picture (the lack of backdrop is what set me thinking that) – in fact, my first idea was whether it was actually a scale model made to look big by a tiny camera. Could well be a Curta calculator, that would be the right kind of size – and an artefact that is fairly “alien” to modern eyes. 🙂

  5. Hi René! The video is way cool! But do you think that advanced-tech aliens would be happy with us shooting their drones? Would we Merkins like it if the Taliban shot down some of our Predators? And who says those are ‘drones’, anyway? Suppose there are aliens inside! It doesn’t seem like a good idea to make them mad! 🙂

    The MySpace page is kind of interesting.

  6. Rene Zandbergen on November 20, 2009 at 8:50 pm said:

    The week part of the whole thing is that it is both capable of becoming
    invisible and has anti-gravity.
    It would have been sufficient to have invisible rotor blades.

    Anyway, nobody think that there is something rather important missing
    from this account of Isaac?

  7. It’s all weak… for me, the issue is more whether or not you think the diagrams are pretty. 🙂

    After all, we Voynich researchers tend to have a bit of a soft spot for circular diagrams. 🙂

  8. Milo Velimirović on November 20, 2009 at 10:18 pm said:

    Curta Calculator – not to be too much of a spoilsport, but I don’t think there’s a significant resemblance. One could just as well make a case that the alien technology was based on a vornado.

  9. Yes, we have a soft spot for circular diagrams. I do like mandalas in general. Many say we have soft spots elsewhere too! 😉

    What do you mean, René? Isaac’s true identity?

    An Ixquick search on “CARET alien technology” was surprisingly productive. Here’s a debunking:

    http://www.theironskeptic.com/articles/issac/issac.htm

  10. Rene Zandbergen on November 21, 2009 at 10:40 am said:

    Hi Dennis,

    this thing is rather the opposite from the Voynich MS in many respects.
    For example, in this case ‘modern forgery’ has to be the foremost theory
    in terms of likelihood. Also, these characters, while supposedly alien,
    look more familiar than the Voynich MS, because they are from our time.

    The glaring omission is the complete lack of interest where all this
    comes from. Not a single word about it. It’s not even clear if these drones
    are supposed to be original (alien) parts or human re-engineered
    ones. Completely incredible.

  11. I find it interesting that there has been no truly convincing debunking on the ‘Isaac’ material, even after this much time has passed. One must admit, even if grudgingly, that if this was a hoax, it was rather brilliantly done. From a purely graphic standpoint, the language and it’s presentation is remarkably beautiful, and the photos remain a mystery, with no mechanical antecedent yet found. Even aspects of the story which are glibly dismissed as being ‘low grade science fiction’ are actually quite compelling and sophisticated. If this is a hoax, I for one tip my hat to the ingenuity and artistic brilliance of its creator!

  12. Paul: it’s always nice to have the actual hoaxer call by, so thanks for dropping in! 😉

    I still think it’s low-grade science fiction stuff, though I do rather like the whole aerospace-junkyard aesthetics involved too. 🙂

  13. Great stuff Guys and Mr.Spelling Great response to Paul..haha this is same stuff I kept hearing over the last 3 years..Why would anyone go thru the expense..the time..but if its a hoax..it was brilliant! A work of Genius..the latter two descriptors by we believed connected to the hoax.

    Speaking of B movies.the whole narrative followed the same hollywood script of a secret lab..alien plans..alien tech..German scientist..going back as far This Island Earth..etc ..same formula
    I like that reference to the calculator will look that up..
    Cheers all
    Manny

  14. I forgot..it the LAP was also written in an illustrator font that was created after the year our Mr. Isaac left that lab..lol..how much more fake can we get in the story..and still they push this where ever they can.

    sorry for secondary post like this.

  15. The whole thing seems to be a circular antenna.
    More like a multi antenna that combines high voltage (The crackling static sound people have reported hearing). and RF fields to create 3rd 4th 5th order fields by mixing.
    The entire device as a whole seems to function as a mechanical balanced modulator of a very advanced design creating the sum and difference of fields along with new fields of an unknown nature ,possible antigravitic.
    The text symbols on it are meaningless however the schematics of the device indicate different fields are being produced.
    I might also add that the device shares effects that are mentioned about the web such as the hutchison effect,the philidephia experiment and slight enertial effects like the steven mark device.

  16. TWF0dA== Errrm… I should perhaps have mentioned that bogus anti-gravity claims are a special interest of mine, so you’ll have to do a lot better than that. 😉

  17. Matthew Brubach on May 29, 2016 at 10:20 pm said:

    The technology referred to in the PACL CARET documents reminds me of the rotating loop of superconducting fluid that the TR3B or TRB3 (triangular craft from the Nevada Test Site) supposedly has. That aircraft “supposedly” carries another craft to the upper atmosphere (top craft does not have the engine power for takeoff, just space flight??). The top craft deploys and repairs vital satellites in the National Security Satellite System.
    – I think this all really deals with a phenomenon called “Quantum Locking”.
    An Israeli company called Quantum Experience Ltd put out a few videos on Youtube as well as a TED demonstration of the phenomenon. Although it seems like magic, it’s not. Nor is it extraterrestrial technology.
    – They start with a thin sapphire disk, Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide, or just plain ceramic disk. The disk is super cooled using liquid Nitrogen and becomes a superconductor. It can then be placed above a magnet or magnetic track and locked into position. Here are the URL’s to the videos: https://youtu.be/Ws6AAhTw7RA and https://youtu.be/PXHczjOg06w (Boaz Almog’s TED demonstration). In the TED video Boaz Almog explains that the thin superconducting wafer can support 70,000 times it’s own weight, and that the disk he is holding can actually support the weight of a small car, right in his hand.
    – This becomes important if you think about the applications – payloads for starters. Say I have a payload that has “End Caps” made of YBCO, constantly cooled by a continuous flow of LN2 from tanks attached to the payload itself. On the top and bottom of the cargo bay I have magnetic pads. In this manner I could lock a payload into position and it would stay levitated, never moving or actually touching the walls of the cargo bay. It’s not resting on the floor of the cargo bay, nor is any of it’s weight supported by the bay. Since the cargo is not supporting the payload in any manner, would the weight of the payload have an affect on the rocket’s engine and fuel consumption? Or better yet, since the weight is not actually touching any side of the rocket, could smaller engines and less fuel be used to put that payload into space. You would normally think yes – the weight would have to be on the engines, but I’m not so sure. Watch the videos to get an understanding of what I am talking about. If the weight of the payload does not stress or tax the engines of the rocket, it would also have no affect on fuel consumption. It would basically reduce the weight and counter the affects of gravity. So, small rocket engines with minimal fuel could place a heavy payload in space. What if you could make an entire craft into a superconductor?

    By the way, Zodiac 408 CIpher that was falsely claimed as being deciphered by Harden: First symbol is Trine 120°, second symbol is Novile 40°. So 120°W 40°N gives you a point inside Lassen County California, about 60 miles north of Lake Tahoe and East of the town of Doyle. Location of a victim? Don’t know..

    Sincerely,
    Matthew Brubach

  18. Matthew Brubach on May 29, 2016 at 10:51 pm said:

    PS: In reference to the Zodiac, you may find CIA cryptonyms interesting. Any project that deals with the former Soviet Union, Russian defectors, Assets is given the designation “AE”. So, “AE Tango/1” would be a project dealing with the Soviet Union, project name Tango, /1 designates a person (would continue /2 /3). Any project stemming from CIA Technical Services is given the designation “MK”. Like MK Ultra and **”MK NAOMI”**. They are all available online, just do a little search. If so, it’s really sad.

  19. Anonymous on July 9, 2023 at 11:13 am said:

    https://www.margaretgel.com/the-isaac-caret-hoax/
    If anyone’s still interested in this, the above link may help.

  20. Anonymous: hilarious! But, sadly, almost certainly a lie from start to finish.

  21. Kelly Coupon on October 19, 2023 at 3:53 am said:

    https://www.scribd.com/document/541533799/Fdocuments-in-Caret-q4-86-Research-Report

    Page 15? Is the parts they supposedly came from. Mufon has a pic of it in action.

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