NOTE: The above coordinates are fake! They lead to a spot IN
Massabesic Lake. There are signs saying NO WADING and NO SWIMMING,
so don’t try to wade or swim to this fake waypoint.
I’ve always been fascinated by time. From the late 1950s to
the present I’ve tried to get more and more precise time and
frequency accuracy. Radio station WWV at the National Bureau of
Standards (now the NIST) was an easy way to get started back then
but getting accuracy to better than 1 part in 1 million (parts in
10 to the -6 power) wasn’t realistic. The next step was a
WWVB 60Khz VLF phase comparator and a high precision crystal
oscillator that allowed me to maintain my local frequency to 2
parts in 10 to the -10 power over 24 hours. That same oscillator
has been running (with only one power down to change back-up
batteries) for over 25 years!
But now, thanks to the GPS system, getting higher accuracy is much
faster and simpler. Each satellite has both rubidium vapor and
cesium beam atomic standards that are corrected by a bank of land
based super-standards. Using an HP Z-3801 L1 (1.57542GHz) GPS
receiver designed for cell phone sites with an internal computer
disciplined 10Mhz local oscillator, I can set my own rubidium
standard to parts in 10 to the -12 power. All commercial rubidium
frequency standards operate by disciplining a crystal oscillator to
the hyperfine transition at 6.834,682,612 GHz in rubidium. To put
that in perspective, if that frequency standard were driving a
clock, it would take about 10,000 years to be off one second. I
won’t even get into leap-seconds, other than to say that that
accounts for the 14 seconds that GPS time is ahead of UTC. GPS time
started on January 6, 1980. An average year is about 365.24219 days
in length.
Now while I find this interesting, I can just see your heads
nodding. Unless you’re a ham trying to score high on the ARRL
frequency test or you’re some other techno-geek, this
isn’t going to help you one bit and, while correct, what
I’ve written has absolutely nothing to do with this cache.
What will help is part of a song from a cult classic movie.
Probably most people already know the reference and know Richard
O’Brian as Riff-Raff who sang:
It's astounding, time is fleeting
Madness takes its toll
But listen closely, not for very much longer
I've got to keep control
I remember doing the Time Warp
Drinking those moments when
The blackness would hit me
And the void would be calling
Let's do the time warp again...
Let's do the time warp again!
That’s probably enough for now but I remember the next few
lines for some reason. Perhaps if you’ve seen the movie in a
theater at midnight you’d remember those same lines as well,
they can be catchy. But enough of this, ‘time’ to solve
this puzzle from my ‘warped’ mind. The difficulty level
is somewhat arbitrary and some will no doubt find this puzzle
trivial, others will have problems. In the puzzle The Time Warp is
represented by the single letter "T".
6475T812412T334556T4T4504T304T6889T4573T402T706T1235195T5762675T355334T65076T53T27
If you can find the video of the "Time Warp" or watch the movie,
it may help, but it isn't necessary for the solution. Google can
give you the lyrics that give you the step-by-step instructions for
the solution to the puzzle.
NOTE: Do not give any hints or spoilers of any sort in your logs or
they may be removed. Thanks
You can check your answers for this puzzle on
Geochecker.com.