Thought In A Thought

Ever thought of a thought, that might become a reality? Of course, you all have!

But ever thought of a dismissed thought becoming a reality in a parallel universe, while you have an improvised or an abysmal version of it in this universe?

I bet most of you have not! Well, now I will tell you to do one thing, close your eyes.

Dr. Harrison Wells was a renowned physicist. He was working on brain waves when some of his experiments started showing weird results. Oh, I forgot to mention, he was the first scientist who developed a time machine, which worked successfully, but had its after-effects and so, the government put a ban on it. 

Nothing could stop Dr. Wells from working on his experiment now. The only problem was he needed to use a time machine that was in the department of defense's control. There was no chance he could steal it from that place.

Dr. Wells's experiment was about how our faith in our thoughts can become a reality in any of the universes and how our brain waves are connected even in parallel universes. He was 99.99% sure about his notion. 

           
Dr. Wells got a mind-boggling idea. He made a brain cap which could make him run into any of the alternate realities so that he could verify his results because this time he is going to merge past present and future and then lacerate it with his new theory on brain waves. He wore his brain cap and went to visit Dr. Wells of Earth 8 (because that was his first discovered alternate reality's planet which was slightly less developed than today's Earth). 

The most interesting thing about brain cap was, it would land you to the exact same location as you were standing on. When he opened his eyes, he saw himself lying down on a football ground. He was horrified, not by the fact that he was lying on a football ground but the place where the majestic Star Labs stood, was nothing but a football pitch! 

                        
He saw someone coming towards him, he was The Harrison Wells, star football player not a renowned scientist. The only difference between both of them was, Dr. Wells wore spectacles and was clean shaved, but Harrison had shoulder-length hairs, thick beard and he was heavily built. 

Dr. Wells never thought of himself to be like this dude, not even in his wildest dreams and he ran away from there before this dude could see him. But he very much wanted to become a football player, and here he was. 

He came back to Earth, worked for 10 years, and proved that there is not just a possibility of alternate realities but there are infinite alternate realities. 

Now, open your eyes and breathe because you have just visited one.

Biosensors - Key to rapid COVID-19 Tests

COVID-19 has shaken up the entire world in a mere a few months.While conventional testing technologies such as quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), serology tests have their own trade-offs but they are time-consuming, labor-intensive and unavailable in remote areas.

And on the contrary, chip-based or paper-based biosensors are typically user-friendly low-cost devices having tremendous potential for rapid medical diagnosis.

The (qRT-PCR) technology looks for a specific sequence of RNA in the sample unique to coronavirus and copies it repeatedly with the addition of different chemicals and the temperature of the solution is cycled. A fluorescent molecule is attached to each copy and when enough RNA copies collect over; the sample glows when hit by light.

With this test, there are few issues; firstly, it is a lab process; secondly, the necessary chemicals can be short in supply and the fastest tests struggle with false negatives. 

Then, there are serology tests but it can recognize only if someone has those viruses in the past not if he/she is currently suffering. This test majorly measures if the blood has started making antibodies against that particular virus. This is a color-change test more like a pregnancy test stick. According to the sources, around 100 antibodies tests have been launched in the market but the accuracy varies.

These traditional diagnoses are either higher in cost or the accuracy varies with a great range and are slow but with the rapid increase in patients’ numbers, the world searches for faster, low-cost solutions.

Companies like Cardea Bio and Hememics are publicly talking about their work on developing such biosensors. 

For viral RNA or antibody detection, the biosensors rely on semiconductor circuitry coated with a biological extract that binds with the biological interest in the sample fluid, and the noticeable flow of electrons changes when such binding occurs. 

Structured much like a Silicon MOSFET with source, drain, and gate between them, in biosensors, the gate is controlled by the binding of the biomolecules more like a BioFET. 

Along with that, biosensors do not require multiplication of the biological material, therefore, the test will be practically lot speedier than the conventional ones. And since any chip contains multiple circuits, multiple tests for different kinds can run simultaneously without any test intervening with the other and this will not only reduce the false results but will provide additional information about the patient’s health.

Cardea has been working over programmable biosensors to platforms to detect DNA, RNA, antibodies and other molecular signals since 2013 and in Jan’2019, it was also ready to work with its commercial partners to develop its products and by the end of 2019, COBO technologies announced that it will be using Cardea platform in a system for quality control of genome engineering when the global pandemic drew the whole world’s attention. 

For a fact for you to be known, Cardea’s special sauce is its use for special molecules from CRISPER technology as a biological detection for RNA.

According to the CEO, Michael Heltzen, Cardea is currently working over the CRISPER test for virus detection for several months and the tests are performing well. Optimizations are still on the line and the issue is from mass production to extreme mass production which is considered to be a holding back matter according to Heltzen but as they say, the company is in discussion with large investors and companies for financial support.

Hememics, the company popular for developing a special sauce that can preserve biological material in a dry form, is also developing biosensors for faster covid virus detection. Before they have been putting antibodies to look for protein but now, they have flipped the chip as they say the version is in development. 

They will be able to test one form of biomolecules in one circuit and some other one on other circuits; multiple tests simultaneously on a faster rate. The technology can be used to test for the virus or the antibodies—or, in the case of a saliva sample, both simultaneously, he says.

Hememics has raised $2.5 million from AMVI Partners and hopes to receive an additional $3 million from the same investment firm and they believe it could have biosensors for coronavirus testing to market by the end of 2020. Rogue Valley Microdevices has already started manufacturing sensor chips for both Cardea and Hememics according to the sources.

Biosensors are not only a critical component to combat the current pandemic but also the future virus attacks. If we are healthy and we can fight against health hazards, we can achieve whatnot. So, we believe, the health sector should be invested in large amounts for the development of such wondrous components like biosensors reaching to massive hands. 

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Theory of Tachyons

22 December 2222

Scientists at ISRO found that there are particles that can travel faster than the speed of light. As predicted earlier by Gerald Feinberg in 1967, there might be some particles that can travel faster than the speed of light.

 Tachyons they were named. The theory of relativity disapproved of any such thing. Well, now the theory of relativity has been proved wrong and the prodigious pedestal of science has shuddered. 

Dea bombarded two God particles (Higgs Boson) and found that a wormhole was created in the particle accelerator, which was unstable and drawing energy from the photons. Wormhole grew colossal in size, as the darkness prevailed. 

The alarms buzzed but then everything fell silent. Either something extraordinary happened or some devouring power was ruling them all. Then there was a huge explosion that didn't harm anyone but added more to the devastating effects of the wormhole.

In the minimum light available, Dea saw that the wormhole was spinning in a clockwise direction. She thought if the same particles could be turned against themselves then maybe she could stabilize the situation. 

She rushed towards the wormhole and got inside it. She thought of a time half an hour before running this experiment. She was back in time. She went down the chambers and changed the orientation of magnets such that the particles would now spin in an anticlockwise direction. 

When the God particles bombarded, the antiparticles of tachyon were created which again formed a wormhole with anticlockwise spin. This new wormhole had the exact opposite demeanor.

 Her idiosyncratic idea worked. It was electrifying everything. It was radiating photons, thus devouring darkness. Even human bodies were getting charged and they could see the lightning when they touched their fingers. 

This charged environment could further lead to catastrophic effects if not controlled. If human beings remained exposed to this wormhole for more than 5 minutes, they would die of electric shocks on their own.

                      
She jumped inside the wormhole, she was being stabbed by streaks of lightning but she had no other choice. She thought of a time when she went inside another wormhole. She directed the convulsive corridor of space-time towards each other, which led to the stabilization of minacious holes.  

As the two vicious rings of space and time collided, there was an explosion when everything went dark and in the blink of an eye, everything became normal. 

Dea had rewritten history. She proved the predictions true. Tachyons are real particles with imaginary mass. She had hammered the theory of relativity hard and was ready to give another theory which would be mind-boggling and alluring.

Lorenz : The Missing Piece of History

The Lorenz SZ-40 is an electro-mechanical wheel-based cipher machine for teleprinter signals. It was developed by the Germans and was used during World War II for communication at the highest level. Improvised twice although, it was broken by the code breakers at Bletchley Park in the early 1940s. During the WW II, for teleprinter signals, besides Lorenz, the German army also used the Siemens T-52 Geheimschreiber, the Lorenz SZ-40, and later also the Siemens T-43 one-time pad machine.

The Lorenz SZ - 40/42 was used by the German High Commands for communication at the highest level,  between Hitler and his generals. The machine was called Schlüsselzusatz (SZ) which means Encryption Add-on. It was connected between a teleprinter and the line and was suitable for both online and offline use. 

History

The Lorenz company built the cipher machine based on an additive method for enciphering teleprinter messages invented in 1918 by Gilbert Verman in America. After world war 2, a group of British and US entered Germany with the front-line troops to capture the documents, technology, and personnel of various German signal intelligence organizations and from the captured, they found SZ40 and SZ42 a/b. The design of the machine they found was feasible with teleprinters.

Gilbert at AT&T Bell Labs in 1917, invented a cipher system that used Boolean “exclusive or” function. Vernam’s cipher is a symmetric-key algorithm which produces the essential reciprocity that allows the same machine with the same settings for encryption as well as decryption. Vernam’s idea was to use conventional telegraphy practice with a paper tape of the plaintext combined with the paper tape of the key but generating them was practically difficult, therefore, he invented rotor cipher machines. 

Working

Teleprinters are not based on a 26-alphabet system but are based on 32-symbol Baudot code. The Vernam system enciphered the message by adding to it, character by character, a set of obscuring characters thus producing the enciphered characters which were transmitted to the intended recipient. The simplicity of Vernam's system lay in the fact that the obscuring characters were added in a rather special way (known as modulo-2 addition). Then the same obscuring characters added also by modulo-2 addition to the received enciphered characters, would cancel out the obscuring characters and leave the original message characters which could then be printed. The working of modulo-2 addition is the same as the XOR operation in logic.

For enciphering and deciphering, the transmitter and receiver are set up identically in which there are two components: setting the patterns on cams of the wheel and rotating the wheels for the start of enciphering. The cam settings were changed less frequently initially but it was made more frequent so that the enemies could not intercept them. The wheel settings were sent by 12-letter indicator un-enciphered but in October 1942, it was changed to a book of single-use settings called the QEP book. 
As was normal telegraphy practice, messages were typed to teleprinter with a paper tape perforator. The typical method was to type the encrypted message, contact the receiving operator with an EIN/AUS switch on the SZ machine to connect to the circuit, and then run the tape through the reader. At the receiving end, the operator would connect the SZ machine to the circuit and the output would be printed on the sticky tape. 

Enigma was considered to be an unsolvable machine and Lorenz was more complicated and sophisticated than that. The Lorenz used 12 wheels and 501 pins and the enciphered message was 5-bit punched paper tape where messages often contained thousands of characters and 1.6 quadrillion starting positions were arguably possible according to the reports and sources. 

But the miracle was that Bill Tutte broke the Lorenz system without even seeing the machine ever. 

Code Breaking

Under the leadership of Major Ralph Tester, “Testery” was formed at Bletchley Park. A lot of information was intercepted but there was no headway for deciphering the messages until the Germans committed a fatal mistake. On 30th August 1941, a German operator sent a 4000-long character message and the receiver wasn’t able to get it, so the message was replied with “didn’t get that - send again”. Both receiver and the sender put their machine with the same starting position which was forbidden and the message sent again was 500 characters lesser than the original probably because the sender was saving his fingers. 

The message began with that well known German phrase SPRUCHNUMMER — "message number" in English. The first time the operator keyed in S P R U C H N U M M E R. The second time he keyed in S P R U C H N R and then the rest of the message text. Now NR means the same as NUMMER but it meant that immediately following the N the two texts were different. But the machines were generating the same obscuring sequence, therefore the ciphertexts were different from that point on.

The enemy interpreters acknowledged that the twelve letter indicators were the same both the times. John Tiltman at Bletchley Park applied the same additive technique he figured before and this time he was able to get through more than the previous ones because when he tried SPRUCHNUMMER at the start he immediately spotted that the second message was nearly identical to the first. Thus the combined errors of having the machines back to the same start position and the text being rekeyed with just slight differences enabled Tiltman to recover completely both texts. Now Tiltman could add together, character by character, the corresponding cipher and message texts revealing for the first time a long stretch of the obscuring character sequence being generated by this German cipher machine.

John now passed the obscured characters to Bill Tutte and he recognized the bit patterns at a repetition of 41 had some significance and by Jan 1942, the codebreakers had deduced the working principle of the Lorenz machine, using nothing but the recovered keystream from the August 1941 message.

Decryption Machines

Several replica machines were built to aid the attack on Tunny (code word for Lorenz). The first was British Tunny built at Bletchley Park based on reverse engineering techniques and after that family of Robinsons were built but the issue was that the two papers synchronized were relatively slow.

The Colossus computers were developed and built by Tommy Flowers, of the Dollis Hill Post Office Research Station, using algorithms developed by W.T. Tutte and his team of mathematicians. Colossus proved to be efficient and quick against the twelve-rotor Lorenz SZ42 on-line teleprinter cipher machine.

It is after the D-Day landings in 1944, the first Lorenz machine was captured and was shown to the codebreakers of Bletchley Park and they were amazed to see the relatively small mechanical machine of which they had created the electronic equivalent. Lorenz was indeed a miraculous machine that would not have been broken if the mistake would not have been committed. 

In Germany, examples of Lorenz may be seen at the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, a computer museum in Paderborn and the Deutsches Museum, a museum of science and technology in Munich. Two further Lorenz machines are also displayed at both Bletchley Park and The National Museum of Computing in the United Kingdom. Another example is also on display at the National Cryptologic Museum in the United States.

With this blog, we come to the end of our mini-series “Decrypting World War 2 communication”. We hope you loved all the blogs and find them interesting and scholarly. Do like, share and comment on our blogs and if you want to read something specific, you can suggest them through our email or you can even comment them down!

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CHELONE

Isis was looking at the prodigious Pacific Ocean. The moonlight was shimmering as the waves capered. As the dawn cracked, stars faded and the moon melted in the caressing rays of the sun. The dancing waves were raconteuring the tales of Poseidon, with each tempestuous stroke on the cliff. She saw that the water was changing color. It turned from pristine to turquoise to murky green to aquamarine to cerulean. 

She thought this might be due to the particular species of phytoplankton present in the ocean. But this type of phytoplankton was found only in the Aegean Sea, near Santorini Island. A chill went down her spine. She was not in the Pacific Ocean. She was lost. When she turned around, a gargantuan wave took her along into the depths of the sea. She was now 100,000 feet underwater. Despite being under immense pressure, she never felt so relaxed. The ethereal feeling abandoned her when she forced her eyes to allow the hue of haze. She was in Atlantis!

                       

The city lost millennia ago, the city of Poseidon. The colossal palace of Atlantis which sank in a day and night stood with pride as it had 96000 years ago. Cyclops, nymphs, mermaids, Pegasus, and other creatures had welcomed her with a garland of conch shells. She saw a turtle that was different from the normal species, was changing the colors of the sea. The colors were changing according to his sense of danger surrounding this splendid world. The color-changing turtle was coming towards Isis, she saw a brain wave telemetry on his back. 

It was the same turtle she was studying last year to interpret the behavior of this peculiar turtle and to alter its genome by exposing it to high gamma radiation because it's gene had a totally different pattern. Instead of having from 28-66 chromosomes, it had 120. Almost double of what one turtle has. It was not some usual turtle looking turtle, it had the head of a fish, the body of an octopus, and speed of turtles, which intrigued the Sherlock inside Isis.

He introduced himself as Chelone and greeted her and with a warm smile. He talks too! He told Isis about the jeopardy threatening the existence of life underwater, caused by human intervention in the realm of the Sea God. Isis knew about the situation. The dilemma of helping life underwater and human beings were ripping her apart from choosing sides. Chelone briefed about the plan of Poseidon to attack homo sapiens for they have tolerated enough. Poseidon has declared a war on the inhabitants of Earth. Tsunamis and earthquakes were common to hear. Hundreds of thousands of people died, for nature requires balance, it has to be the survival of the fittest.

 Humans have dominated themselves on nature, they had to pay the price. They intervene in the restricted zones and call it curiosity, they exploit and call it development. The most beautiful creation of God, Humans have indeed proved themselves the most dangerous, selfish, and insane species. The rage of the sea God made human beings an endangered species. The wrath of the Sea God eradicated the very presence of the smartest species in history. 

Darkness eloped Isis and she was lying unconscious on Santorini Island. When Isis woke up, she was in the hospital. Her years of research and hard work got her a Nobel prize in biology. Isis had discovered a new species of turtles and altered their genome. This particular species survived on plastic. They consumed plastic and produced a protein to treat cancer. This new species was called Chelone.

Fialka - The Soviet’s Unbreakable Code

This blog comes under the mini-series ”Decrypting World War 2 communications”. Though the machine we are talking about today was used during the cold-war era.

The M-125 with code name Fialka was an electromechanical based cipher machine developed after World War 2 during the cold-war era. Both the Soviet Union and United States had extensive nuclear capabilities which weren’t possibly considered to be mere a normal power because it had the capacity to devastate not millions but billions and that’s why an utmost secrecy was an ultimate significance. Enigma was considered to be the most powerful encoded form of communication but it has already been broken by the rival allies by the end of world war 2 and the more secure successor, the Lorenz was also decoded by the British cryptanalysts. Therefore, something more powerful was the requirement.

Fialka was introduced first in 1956 which soon became one of the favorite cipher machines of the Warsaw Pact and some allied nations like Cuba. The original M-125 was succeeded by the M-125-3M in the 1960s and remained in use till the early 1990s. 

History

Fialka means a rather small flower; violet in Russian but contrary to its name, it wasn’t a delicate item but a very powerful machine. M-125 and M-125-3M were the two basic versions of it and “Fialka” word was actually the cipher procedure but since most people called the machine “Fialka”, it became popular with the same. 
Similar to the mechanism to Enigma, the German popular, it also used electromechanical cipher wheels to scramble the actual text. Whenever a user typed any letter, the wiring inside changed and the alternate alphabet was visible and till this, the similarity was present.  

Unlike printing it on a lamp-panel, it directly printed in on a paper-strip and at the same time, it had the capacity to punch the letter in an 5-bit digital code and in addition to that, a paper tape transmitter was also equipped with it to transmit or duplicate a message. The following improvements were made in Fialka regarding the flaws of Enigma: 

10 wheels were indulged into the machine rather than 3 to 4 wheels to complicate more and the adjacent wheels rotated in the opposite direction.

• The wheel turnovers were more frequent to baffle the enemy.

• It was possible to change the wheel wiring on the field in case of sudden attack.

• A single letter can be encoded into itself which was impossible in Enigma.

• The auxiliary features especially added to make it more powerful were:

• The use of letters, numbers and punctuation marks.

• There was a possibility to duplicate a punched-paper tape.

• It was suitable as a standard teletype machine.

• It supported both Russian (Cyrillic) and Latin Alphabets which was helpful for all allied nations.

Working

It had two electrical components, one at the left and one at the right. All controls were conveniently spread over the body of the machine. After connecting the machine to the Power Supply Unit (PSU), it was switched ON by placing the ON/OFF switch in the БКЛ.-position. When typing a message, a copy holder can conveniently be raised to hold the message form. A ruler holds the form in place and can be used as a pointer by moving it up and down. 

Mode of Operations

 A three-position lever in the large circular “blob”  is used to select the required mode of operation. It is called the MODE selector and is used to select between Coding, Decoding and Plain Text. 

Russian/Latin

The basic Fialka machine supports 30 different characters designed for Russian language and Cyrillic character set. In order to avoid mechanical complexity of the electric wheels, the 30 most frequently used Cyrillic characters are used. These are the following characters:

А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ы Ь Ю Я Й

On each Fialka machine, regardless of the country in which it was used, these 30 characters are always at the same position on the keyboard and on the print head. On the international version of the M-125, it is possible to switch between Russian and Latin. For that, two letters are printed on each key top: a Cyrillic one in green and a Latin one in red. The position of the Latin characters varies per country. Numbers were not present on the keyboard and had to be typed in full word.

Cipher wheels

The M-125  uses 10 cipher wheels which have 30 flat-faced electrical contacts and 30 spring-loaded contacts respectively on both sides. Each of the 10 cipher wheels is wired differently and has the number of pins on the outer rim which controls the stepping of the wheel of its neighbour. The number of pins and their position are different on each wheel. Each of the 10 wheels is identified by a letter of the Russian alphabet which is engraved in its right side. 

In principle, all wheels can make a single step in each key-press, but it's stepping can be inhibited by its controlling wheel. Wheel 2 controls the stepping of wheel 4. If a pin is present at a certain position, it inhibits the stepping of wheel 4. For this reason the pins are also known as 'advance blocking pins'. In the same way, wheel 4 controls the stepping of wheel 6, and so on. For the odd wheels, wheel 9 is the driving one. It controls wheel 7 that in turn controls wheel 5, etc.

Card Reader

The M-125-3 has a card reader that adds an extra layer of permutations to the machine. The card reader is located at the left side of the machine and consists of a drawer that gives access to a 30 x 30 contact matrix. In many respects it can be seen as a non-moving programmable wheel. Lower the metal bar that protects the reader and firmly pull out the drawer that holds the card.
As the Fialka uses a reflector, just like Enigma's Umkehrwalze, the current passes the card reader twice. In practice the punched card was part of the daily key and was changed every 24 hours. It was made of paper that was so thin that it easily got ripped, so that it could not be used twice.

Printer

Unlike the WWII German Enigma machine that presented its output on a panel with 26 lamps, the Fialka can print its output directly on a paper strip that could be used directly in a telegram. In addition, the machine could also punch the message into a standard 5-level teleprinter tape.
The Fialka accepts two paper sizes. In addition to the standard 5-level teleprinter tape, it is also possible to print the text on a narrow 10 mm paper tape.

Tape Reader

The M-125-3 has a fully integrated paper-tape reader that accepts standard 5-level teleprinter tape in the specific Fialka encoding standard. It is located at the front right of the machine and is mechanically coupled to the keyboard. It can be used to play back previously created messages.

Counters

The M-125 has a character counter at the front left that is used to count 5-letter groups. The counter is reset by pressing the large push-button at the front of the machine's base. The rightmost digit (marked with a red border) is used to count the characters and wraps around at five (1-5) whilst the remaining 3 digits are used to count the number of 5-letter groups.

Explanation

Although the circuit diagram of the M-125 is very complex, its operating principle is similar to, but more advanced than, the Enigma cipher that was used by the Third Reich during WWII. The extra complexity was added to circumvent certain cryptographic weaknesses of the Enigma.

Let us first consider the above block diagram of the Enigma. It has 26 keys that operate 26 switches. The current from the battery is passed by these keys through the plugboard (German: Steckerbrett) onto a static entry disc (German: Eintrittswalze, or ETW). From the ETW, the current is passed through the cipher wheels until it hits the reflector (German: Umkehrwalze, or UKW). The UKW returns the current back through the wheels, the ETW and the Steckerbrett, after which it arrives at the lamp panel where the lamp of the encoded letter lights up. This is the output.

The operating principle of the M-125 is similar, but the plugboard has been replaced by a card reader that offers a stronger encryption by providing a non-self-reciproke permutation. The keyboard (at the right) is used for the input. It consists of 30 electrical contacts; one for each key. Furthermore, the keys are mechanically encoded into a 5-bit digital code (similar to Baudot). When typing, the current from the 30 contacts is passed to the card reader at the top right.

From the card reader, the current is passed via the static entry disc, through the 10 cipher wheels. After the current arrives at the reflector on the left, it is returned through the 10 wheels, the entry disc and the card reader, until it arrives at the 5-bit encoder (bottom right), where the 30 lines are converted into a 5-bit code (similar to, but different from Baudot) for the printer.

Cracking the Fialka

Cryptanalysis of Fialka was difficult, but not impossible. The ten rotors with 30 character positions each and two ways to slot in the rotor (forwards and backwards) gave a massive number of starting configurations, over 604 quadrillion possibilities! Adding in the later upgrade of a rotor with changeable wirings gives another 403 heptillion, or 403 trillion trillion possibilities. Like in Enigma, the rotors themselves can be rearranged in another ten factorial, or 3.6 million ways. Finally, a day key can be inputted on a punch card that swaps certain letters, functioning like the Enigma’s plugboard. Multiplying, we see that even without the day key, the number of possible starting configurations number in at 8.7 followed by fifty zeroes.

The increasing complexity of electromechanical ciphers using rotor technology had its limitations. Israel captured a machine during the 6 Day War in 1967, and the NSA built a computer to decrypt Fialka traffic fairly easily (Courtois, 2012). The fact was, rotor ciphers became so frequently used that finding a method of cryptanalysis was hardly new territory. Rotor machines and electromechanical ciphers had already begun to reach the end of their usefulness when digital computing delivered the deathblow.

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All of the Stars II

Hey readers, if you have missed the first part of All of the Stars, please find it here:

https://bit.ly/3h2IvMh

We hope you have a good read of the second part of All of the Stars;

Yesterday, today and tomorrow are not consecutive, they are connected in a never-ending circle. The end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end.

Science could be complicated, if you don’t think the other way; and could be simple, if you work on it. Months after months graphs like the previous ones and stress came out of the machine, leaving no clue to Ema, Sheeran being her only support, like a false hope for her to not give up. Those outputs, day after day, started being pinned at the bulletin by Ema at her room.

Ema don’t you dare to turn off the TV, the alienx will be revealed today!, exclaimed Peter. Ema smiled, like she confessed her heart out to Eric and they both are finally together, her smile was one of happiness growing, much as a spring flower opens. He probably now could see how it came from deep inside to light her eyes and spread into every part of her. She smiled with more than her mouth, and he heard it in her voice, in the choice of her words and the way she drove to the tasc force station.

It's just another evening, and I’m staring, I saw a smile and thought of her, while she sang a lullaby by the tasc side and knew I was there, on the other side, and she wondered if I could see the stars too! Little did she know, what would my messages actually mean, but she was close to them, as she took the analog cathode ray oscilloscope, coded a word and examined that Lissajous pattern carefully.

The peak, and its significance, the amplitude of “We have stars around, yes, and I can see them too”, as she cracked the first one and I sent another one, “Great, going Ema! You get me finally.”

Our body is a host for a plethora of microorganisms, what if actually, we are the parasites? I don’t want to confuse you readers, so I will just come to my point. The gay bizarre while she decoded them all brought me comfort, but I cannot still falsify that she got so far away from me into Ed’s dimension, the Earth’s dimension. She got the peaks and understood the encryption and still she can’t see the stars I see.

Unlike the meshed cables, it was getting simplified at one end, while complicating at the other, at my end. I wonder why I loved stars so much, afterall I am here just because of them and I could have been with my people right now, but I chose Mission Worm, my escape to touch those twinkling dots I watched with Ema from the terrace. Fandom is beautiful, and limelight is all we seek, accept or not, an inch of us aches for it, and when it comes with the religion you have accepted as yours, it ain’t given second thoughts. Somehow the astronism in me made me all set in a space-suit and make a visit to the unbottled kinetic energy of dance and the unexplored land to walk, should I have thought of anything else? You never know, what's next. Don’t be quick as life is just too different here, Eric the worm-lead all over the news, but just not there all over, and actually here, missing her.

Memory is a lived, morphing experience and not some static file from which we withdraw dates, time and photographs. Static memories are the domains of computers and not really bear the kind humans have, this has been driving me so far to reach out, thanks to the Escapalator. I reached my hands out in the dark atmos, to wait for hers to interlock, and I did my best. Now when I look back into Ema, all I will say is that the genius of our brain’s construction remains so shrouded when compared to the much evident brain of the computer, that we miss to live what we lived and create our own parallel existence in the Milkyway.

Leave Brain and intelligence, Heart again is such a complicated organ of the body, right? Whether it’s science or fiction, every story is somehow connected to heart, the muscle, the size of a fist that keeps us alive, and sometimes it’s the metaphorical one, the source of love, a photograph of all the stars we saw. I can’t give up, all that she is, is all I'll ever need, is the only thing that strikes me of Ed after all of our stars, and I sent a message again.

The excited pulse signals the blue dazzle brought this time was a different hit, meaningless like a word from beyond the world but I got what I never expected, a meaning, she opened her eyes and saw how our horizons met, and all those blue lights lead into the talks with me, and I know these different dimensions will bleed, but both of our hearts believe, the stars will guide us home.

Everything that came to his past and her present was influenced, like the pawns on the chessboard and future controlled it and the relativity showed it. Eric smiled as she looked into the sky with the telescope, that falling star like a slanting silver rope on the loose earth sent love to their seed.

This journey has been a real beautiful one and now it’s the time to say a  goodbye! Well, this does not mean we are ending our Sci-Fi Sundays, but now it’s the time for new writers and their new stories. We hope you have by far loved all our works and you enjoyed reading this IEEE SB NITP original as we complete our fifty blogs today! Do drop your comments.

Adios,

Charulata, Priyansh, Akansh, Aditi

Nurture the Nature

Don't think you alone can't change the world. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, "To see a change in the world, you need to be that change," and so you need to start it yourself these small things:

1) Try carrying your own cloth bag to the market instead of using plastic ones available at the store.

2) It will just take a minute to keep a bowl of water at your roof for the birds. Your one minute will make their day, for they are creatures too and unlike us privileged from the second we are born, they find their fundamental sources by themselves. Help them out!

3) Avoid running taps while brushing or washing hands. Use it only when required.

4) Try saving paper, giving away study materials instead of dumping them somewhere.

5) The puppies or cows by the street could be given that extra food rotting in your refrigerator and going to the wasted, it's much better than those animals eating plastics and waste.

6) Just don't throw your eateries wrappers on the streets.

Together let's all not just move ahead with technology and sustainability but also with ethics and small efforts. This World Environment Day, let's keep these points in mind.

From Trampoline to ISS

Since COVID-19 has hit the planet, there’s only been some news that made us happy. Marking the Silver Jubilee edition of IEEE Student Branch NITPs’ “Tech- Thursdays”, we present you the insights to an attempt to transform all your sci-fi fantasies to reality as Elon Musk has given us another reason to cheer about.

Dragon 2 is a class of reusable spacecraft developed and manufactured by American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX as the successor to the Dragon 1 cargo spacecraft. It has two variants; Crew Dragon, a human-rated capsule capable of ferrying up to seven astronauts, and Cargo Dragon, an updated replacement for the original Dragon spacecraft. Let's begin our voyage into the Crew Dragon in this blog!

On the 30th of May, 2020, SpaceX became the first private company to successfully launch humans into orbit through their Demo-2 mission. The mission was to fly two veteran NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS. Though this mission is considered a test, it still carried enormous weight for the United States. The last time people launched to orbit from the US was during the final flight of NASA’s Space Shuttle on July 8th, 2011. Since then, Russia’s Soyuz rocket has been the only vehicle available to do crewed flights to the ISS, and just one seat on the Soyuz runs NASA about $80 million.

At the heart of the mission was Crew Dragon, a state of the art, completely autonomous vehicle that launched on one of the reusable Falcon 9 rockets. 

Falcon 9 is a two stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for reliable and safe transportation of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond. It’s the world’s first orbital class reusable rocket driving down the cost of space access, as reusability allows SpaceX to refly the most expensive parts of the rocket. 

Powered by Merlin Engines, Falcon 9 represents the greatest technological development in rocket engineering. Its ability to precisely land on an autonomous floating drone ship makes it a true engineering marvel.

When SpaceX performs a rocket launch with the Falcon 9, the rocket separates into two stages in the earth's atmosphere. The second stage of the rocket carries the payload into space while the first stage booster returns to earth and lands at a landing site for re-use. The booster is programmed to follow a precise flight path back to earth, and it must autonomously perform a series of controlled maneuvers in order to maintain that path and land vertically on the landing pad.

On the exterior, Crew Dragon is broken into two segments: The capsule which is designed to carry critical pressurised cargo and people and the trunk which is an unpressurized service module. Outside the module you will find the Draco thrusters that help propel the vehicle and around the truck you can find solar arrays that power the spacecraft.

Now stepping inside Crew Dragon, you definitely start to get Space Odyssey vibes. Contrary to the Soyuz capsule or the Space Shuttle which had buttons lining the walls, Crew Dragon is a minimalist design outfitted with seats for the passengers who face touch screen displays. Plus, the craft has an environmental control and Life Support System that helps in keeping a stabilized pressure for humans and other life on board and also controlling temperatures between 18 to 27 degree Celsius.

Before the Launch, SpaceX conducted a series of tests to showcase the functionality of the spacecraft, to ensure that the parachutes, back-up engines and detachment controls are all in working order.

In 2019, NASA expressed their concerns over the parachute systems based on previous tests where the spacecraft hit the ground harder than it should have and sustained damage. To resolve the issue, they integrated Zylon, a high performance polymer material that's lightweight and known for its strength, with the parachutes. After this Musk suggested that the parachutes are 10 times safer than the previous versions.

Leading up to the mission SpaceX and NASA blew up a Falcon 9 on January 19, 2020 to assess the Crew Dragon's Escape System in case of a rapid unscheduled disassembly, the technical term for an unplanned explosion. Whenever this happens Crew Dragon will detach from the Falcon 9 and propel itself and humans inside away from the rocket. Then the capsule will let loose a parachute and drift safely down to earth.

In steps we can understand the mission as:

1. Astronauts board via Crew Access Arm

The walkway connects the Fixed Service Structure (FSS) of Pad 39A to the tip of the Falcon 9 rocket, where the astronauts will board the Crew Dragon. 

2. Lit Off

The Falcon 9 rocket lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday (May 30) at 3:22 p.m. EDT (1922 GMT). 

3. Return of the Falcon 9 booster

About 2.5 minutes after lift-off, the Falcon 9's first stage booster separated from the upper stage and begun preparations for a landing back on Earth. SpaceX plans to land the rocket on a drone ship called "Of Course I Still Love You," which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. 

4. Dragon separation

Just a few seconds after the first stage separation, the rocket's second stage fired its engines for about six minutes. The Crew Dragon spacecraft separated from the rocket's second stage. At that point, Crew Dragon was on its own in space for the first time. For the cargo version of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, this was when the solar arrays would deploy to begin powering the spacecraft. However, the Crew Dragon has its solar panels built into the body of the spacecraft, so no big, shiny solar panels unfolded.

5. Approaching the ISS

Once Crew Dragon separated from the rocket's upper stage, the spacecraft performed a series of phasing maneuvers to gradually approach and autonomously dock with the International Space Station (ISS).  The phasing burns will raise Crew Dragon's altitude to the altitude of the ISS, which orbits Earth at an average altitude of about 250 miles (400 km). The first phase burn is scheduled to begin 47 minutes after lift-off.

6. Docking the ISS

When Crew Dragon gets close to the ISS, entering an imaginary 650-foot (200 meters) bubble around it known as the "keep-out sphere," it will align with its docking port at the Pressurized Mating Adapter PMA-2 on the Harmony module of the ISS. The spacecraft will then inch very slowly toward the station and dock with a fully autonomous docking system. If needed, the astronauts on board can also take over manual control of the spacecraft.

7. Stay at Space, ISS

The Demo-2 astronauts will spend anywhere from 30 to 119 days at the International Space Station — NASA and SpaceX have not yet decided exactly how long the mission will last. The duration of the Demo-2 mission will depend on the state of the Crew Dragon capsule in orbit as well as the progress on the next Crew Dragon vehicle, which is slated to launch the first operational mission, called Crew-1, as early as Aug. 30.

8. Demo 2 crew heads home

Whenever the Demo-2 mission departs the ISS, the procedure for its departure will be much like the arrival, only backwards. The spacecraft must first slowly exit the "keep-out sphere" before conducting more phasing burns to lower its orbit. The entire descent will be about a two-day flight sequence. 

9. Trunk separation of Crew Dragon

As it gets closer to Earth, the Crew Dragon spacecraft will jettison its service module, known as its "trunk," before conducting a deorbit burn that will send it plummeting into Earth's atmosphere. The trunk is a cylindrical, finned module that contains the spacecraft's built-in solar arrays and other equipment required for its flights to and from the space station. Crew Dragon jettisons its trunk during re-entry to clear the spacecraft's heat shield and prepare the spacecraft for splashdown.

10. Re-entry into Earth

The Crew Dragon spacecraft will enter Earth's atmosphere traveling at a speed of about 17,000 mph (27,000 km/h). The friction of particles in the atmosphere will create a drag force, slowing it down drastically while heating the outside of the capsule to temperatures nearly as hot as the sun. 

11. Deploying parachutes

Once Crew Dragon has completed the fiery re-entry phase of its return flight, the spacecraft will deploy its four Mark 3 parachutes, which will slow down the vehicle as it descends for a gentle splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. 

12. Splash search

A search and recovery crew will be waiting nearby on SpaceX's GO Navigator ship to help the Demo-2 crew out of the Crew Dragon and hoist the spacecraft out of the water so it can return to Cape Canaveral, where SpaceX and NASA crews will inspect it. 

We hope you all loved reading the twenty-fifth edition of our Thursday effort and would keep on supporting the days ahead!