How did Cooper find the location of NASA from the patterns?
How did Cooper find the location of NASA from the patterns in the dust in Interstellar?
Later from the movie we come to know that Cooper himself was sending those coordinates of NASA.
But what I don't get from the movie is how did Cooper make to it to be the coordinates since that data could be anything.
Granted that his future self knowing himself could have had an idea on how he thinks but it's still one thing to know himself another thing to figure it out completely. This part seems a little bit unconvincing to me.
Best Answer
Latitude and Longitude are often used to represent locations. A lot of GPS devices also use this. Since Cooper was a pilot, he was most definitely familiar with this.
Binary is one way to represent numbers, just like HEX and Decimal. Since Cooper was an engineer, he was most definitely aware of this.
So, doesn't seem too far-fetched to me (unlike the ending of the film).
Pictures about "How did Cooper find the location of NASA from the patterns?"
EXCLUSIVE: Buzz Aldrin Confirms UFO Sighting in Syfy's 'Aliens on the Moon'
More answers regarding how did Cooper find the location of NASA from the patterns?
Answer 2
If I deciphered two numbers from binary (in BCD or ascii) that looked like: 38.835556 and 104.6975
then I would not have to be a former astronaut (just someone who likes cartography) to figure out that they mean: 38°50?08?N 104°41?51?W
Quibble: The only problem was that the bar codes in the dust didn't seem to have enough 'data' to yield 38.835556 and 104.6975 encoded in BCD, IEEE 754, or ASCII.... At least from the camera perspective, it looked like a 1 dimension (no jokes about 'gravity') barcode such as Code128 and not a 2D one such as Aztec. I only counted about 16 bars on the floor, so only 2 bytes worth of data (not assuming checksums and start/end bars)....
Answer 3
Binary and Co-ordinates are pretty basic concepts that tech people understand and can easily recognise - especially a NASA trained pilot.
Anecdotally I had a birthday once where I was given a location in a hidden message, it was a bit unusual but I managed to reverse engineer the format and get the answer. Turns out in this case it was morse numbers - even though I was unfamiliar with morse I could quickly decipher them.
itsallaboutrecognisingpatternsinunfarmiliardata
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Nothing Ahead, Dziana Hasanbekava, Samson Katt, William Fortunato