The Rhea Expansion was introduced to EVE Online bringing with it Thera with its many ever-changing wormhole connections. Johnny Splunk and G8keeper, our founders, decided to form a neutral service corporation, EvE-Scout, tasked with publicly documenting the connections live on a website they created at eve-scout.com.
“I still remember the first time I traversed into Thera and the following week of maintaining the connections in Thera with our co-founder G8keeper. We would take shifts between sleeping, real life, and scanning Thera. It was stressful and exhilarating: some of the best parts of EVE!” – Johnny Splunk
EvE-Scout
However, Johnny and G8keeper soon realized that the endeavor was not sustainable with just two of them. Fortunately, volunteers from the greater New Eden community were eager to help scan Thera’s wormholes as scouts. In an effort to maintain the corp’s neutrality, the original Thera scouts were not permitted to join EvE-Scout. Due to EvE-Scout’s dedicated and trusted scout team, the service became the de facto source of Thera wormhole connection information.
Johnny stated, “When we launched the Thera scanning project we wanted to provide neutral information to all of New Eden. Not to favor one group over another. Our scouts were not even able to join our corporation (EvE-Scout). We only accepted out-of-corp scouts. The reason was we could disavow our scout’s other activities and while at the same time allow us to attract scouts without them leaving their existing corp.”
Signal Cartel
As one would expect, a lot of the original out-of-corp Thera scouts were also explorers. As exploration is a mostly solitary affair, these scouts wanted to create more of a community with an identity centered on scanning and exploration. Thus, the idea for a new player corporation was formed. While Johnny and G8keeper were supportive, they were busy expanding EvE-Scout’s Thera Scanning service and knew they would need someone else to run the new corporation. They wanted the corp to be neutral to all, counter-culture in ideology, and of course exploration-centric.
Fortunately, Mynxee was there to answer the call as one of the first Thera scouts having recently returned to the game as an explorer after gaining infamy as the founder and leader of the Hellcats and fame as a CSM5 (2010) Chairwoman.
According to Mynxee, “Soon after my arrival in Thera, I started scouting for them. We began talking about exploration as a career and what a fine thing it would be to create a home, a haven, for explorers who just want to wander between the stars on their own agenda. Much talking later, Signal Cartel was born: a corp devoted to the highest ideals of exploration, nurturing to new players, and many other things besides that are practically foreign in New Eden culture.”
January 2015
Signal Cartel was co-founded on January 20th, 2015 by Johnny Splunk, G8keeper, and Mynxee with Mynxee serving as the first CEO with our Credo at the heart and core of who we are. EvE-Scout Enclave Alliance was formed on January 23rd, including its two member corporations EvE-Scout and Signal Cartel. Then on January 31st, Signal Cartel opened its doors to the public.
Of the original dozen or so Signal Cartel members that joined the corp on the opening day, I’m humbled, honored, and proud to be the oldest active member and current Alliance Executor.
Happy 10th Birthday Signal Cartel/EvE-Scout Enclave Alliance! o7
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.
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.
Greetings, and welcome to Signal Cartel’s new home on GalNet.
Since our inception, Signal Cartel information has been presented on the EvE-Scout web site, along with information published by EvE-Scout about connections to Thera. As Signal Cartel has grown and diversified in its own service offerings and activities, we wanted a more collaborative space to share our stories and activities. This site was set up for that purpose by Signaleer Thrice Hapus and my delightful co-leader Johnny Splunk; many thanks to both of them for their help. (Note: Our application for joining, recruiters’ tools, and forums will remain at www.eve-scout.com for admin reasons.)
Here, you will find information about Signal Cartel’s various divisions, alliance information, a group blog, a link to our swag store (soon!), and more to come. Our members will be invited to share their exploration- or corp/alliance-related adventures, in-character musings, creative efforts, game features expertise, and research findings in the blog. Original posts and selected cross-posts from members’ blogs and our internal forums are all candidates for publication here. We might even consider guest posts from the wider New Eden community. Regardless of who authors the posts you read here, they will be curated by me and edited for suitability, readability, and editorial quality prior to publication.
As busy and engaged as our members are, we should generate a lot of new blog content every month. Let us know what you enjoy by commenting on and sharing posts. And don’t forget to add our blog to your blogrolls and aggregation sites.
