Meanwhile, independently of this business, which in the press had acquired a circulation of sorts, a truly curious incident came about. It began when Dr. Ralph Loomis, a statistician by education, who had his own agency, doing, mainly, market research for smaller companies, wrote to Swanson with a complaint. It seemed that nearly a third of volume two of Swanson’s random tables was a perfect duplication of a previous series found in volume one. Loomis suggested that perhaps Swanson, not wanting to labor over the systematic transcription of “noise” into columns of figures, had done it only once, and then, instead of providing further random sequences, mechanically copied the first series, bothering only to shuffle a couple of pages. Swanson, at least in this particular case, had a clear conscience; he rejected Loomis’s demand for reimbursement and in indignation wrote him a few choice words. Loomis, in turn indignant, and considering himself swindled, took the matter to court. Swanson was fined for personal abuse; moreover, the court agreed with the plaintiff that the second installment of the series tables was a fraudulent repetition of the first. Swanson appealed, but five weeks later withdrew his appeal and, paying the fine, disappeared without a trace.
The Topeka Morning Star several times gave coverage of the litigation of Loomis versus Swanson, because it was the silly season then and there were no better stories. One of these articles was read by Dr. Saul Rappaport of the Institute for Advanced Study on his way to work (as he told me, he found the paper on a seat in the train — he never would have purchased it).
It was Saturday, and the Morning Star, having additional column space to fill that day, included, besides the court proceedings, Laserowitz’s “Brothers in Reason” declaration, along with an irate rebuttal from Dr. Halsey. Rappaport therefore was able to see the whole of this strange if insignificant affair. As he put down the paper, a thought came to him, a thought so queer that it was comical: Laserowitz, taking the “sections of silence” on the tapes for signals, was without question raving. And yet it was conceivable that at the same time the man could be right, seeing in the tapes a “communication” — if that communication was the very noise!
An insane idea, but Rappaport could not rid himself of it. A stream of information — human speech, for example — does not always tell us that it is information and not a chaos of sounds. Often we receive a foreign language as complete babble. Individual words can be distinguished only by someone who understands the language. For someone who does not, there exists but one way to make possible that all-important recognition. In the case where we receive true noise, individual signals never repeat themselves in the same order. In this sense a “noise series” would be, say, a thousand numbers that show on a roulette wheel. It would be quite impossible for the next thousand turns of the wheel to repeat, in the same sequence, the results of the preceding series. This is precisely the essence of “noise,” that the order of appearance of its elements — be they sounds or other signals — is unforeseeable. If, however, the series repeats itself, it proves that the “noise” quality of the phenomenon is superficial, that in fact we have before us a transmitter acting as a channel of information.
Dr. Rappaport thought to himself that, just possibly, Swanson had not lied to the judge and had not copied, in a circle, one single tape, but had used sequentially the tapes that resulted from those many months of recording cosmic radiation. If the radiation was an intentional signaling, and if, in that period of time, one series of emissions of the “communication” concluded and then the transmission of the communication was resumed from the beginning, the result would be what Swanson swore to. The subsequent tapes would record the exact same series of impulses, which by their repetition would reveal that their noise aspect was only an illusion!
It was in the highest degree unlikely, but nevertheless possible. Whenever he experienced brainstorms like this, Rappaport, usually an easygoing sort of person, showed unusual initiative and energy. The paper gave the address of Dr. Halsey, so it was simple to get in touch with him. The main thing Rappaport needed was to get his hands on one of the tapes. He wrote to Halsey, but without revealing his idea — it would have sounded too fantastic — and asked only whether Halsey would mind lending him the tapes that remained in the archives of Mount Palomar. Halsey, put out by having got involved in the Laserowitz business, refused. It was then that Rappaport took up the matter in earnest; he wrote directly to the Observatory. His name was well enough known in scientific circles, and in no time he acquired a good kilometer of tape, which he handed over to his friend Dr. Hense, so that he could run a computer analysis of the frequency distribution of its elements.
But the problem, even in this phase, was much more complex than I have presented it here. Information resembles pure noise to a greater degree the more thoroughly (economically) the transmitter makes use of the channel of the transmission. If the channel is made use of totally — if, in other words, there is no redundancy — the signal, for one uninformed, in no respect differs from utter chaos. As I have said, it is only possible to reveal such noise as information if the emissions of the message repeat themselves in a circle and one can set them side by side for comparison. That was exactly Rappaport’s intention. He was to be assisted in this by equipment at the computer center where Hense worked. Rappaport did not tell Hense at first what he was about, preferring to keep it quiet; this way, if his idea fizzled, no one would ever know. This amusing beginning of what later became a most unamusing affair was related by Rappaport many times; he even kept, like a sacred relic, a copy of the newspaper that had led him to his famous revelation.
Hense, burdened with work, was not particularly eager to take on an arduous analysis without even knowing the purpose; so Rappaport finally decided to let him in on the secret. Hense’s first reaction was to laugh at Rappaport; but, impressed by the latter’s arguments, he at length agreed to the request.
When Rappaport returned, several days later, to Massachusetts, Hense greeted him with news of negative results, which, in Hense’s opinion, refuted the fantastic hypothesis. Rappaport — I know this from him — was ready to abandon the whole thing, but, nettled by the gibes of his friend, began to argue with him. After all, he told him, the entire neutrino emission of one quadrant of the firmament is a veritable ocean covering an enormous spectrum of frequencies, and even if Halsey and Mahoun, combing that spectrum once, had by sheer luck pulled out from it a “piece” of emission that was artificial, coming from an intelligent sender, it would be a miracle indeed for them to accomplish the same thing — again by luck — a second time.
Therefore they should try to get the tapes that were in Swanson’s possession. Hense went along with this reasoning, but observed (he, too, wanted to be right) that, given the alternative of “message from the stars” versus “Swanson’s fraud,” the second proposition had a probability a few billion times greater than the first. He added that obtaining the tapes would do Rappaport little good: Swanson, when he received the court summons, and no doubt wanting to build himself a good defense, could simply have copied the tape he had and then presented that copy as another original neutrino recording.
Rappaport had no answer to that, but he knew someone in the field of long-sequence semiautomatic recording devices. He telephoned the man and asked if it was in any way possible to distinguish a tape on which certain natural processes were registered from tapes onto which similar impressions had been transferred secondhand. (In other words, what was the difference — if any existed — between an original recording and a copy of it?) It turned out that such a distinction could sometimes be made. Rappaport then went to Swanson’s lawyer and in a week had the full set of tapes at his disposal. As it turned out, all were pronounced original by the expert; thus Swanson had committed no fraud, and thus the emission had in fact repeated itself periodically.
Rappaport informed neither Hense nor Swanson’s lawyer of this finding, but that very same day — or, rather, that very night — he flew to Washington. Well aware of the hopelessness of trying to force his way through the bureaucracy’s obstacle course, he went straight to Mortimer Rush, the President’s science adviser and the former director of NASA, whom he knew personally. Rush, a physicist by education, a man with a first-rate head on his shoulders, received Rappaport despite the lateness of the hour. For three weeks Rappaport waited in Washington while the tapes were examined by specialists of increasing importance.