Lectures on cryptography and virtual reality mark 1st day of FestMat

06/09/2024

What is the relationship between prime numbers and cryptography? IMPA researcher Carolina Araujo was present on the main stage of the National Math Festival and explained to the audience what lies behind the security of simple messaging apps and access to bank accounts, for example. The process currently involves the use of prime numbers, but it wasn’t always like this.

With amusing and didactic language, Carolina explained that concern about decoding messages has been a reality since the time of Ancient Rome.

“The Julius Caesar cipher was used to transmit war secrets. In this period, each letter of the original message was replaced by the letter three positions ahead, so that the text was intelligible and only those who had the recipe knew how to decipher it.”

Of course, with the passage of time and the use of technology, cryptographic methods have had to be renewed.

“The secret to making it work is to start with a prime number. They don’t all give the same security. We need to know how to choose well, but we have had extensive theory being developed for several centuries and we know that [Sophie] Germain’s primes are good for cryptography. One prime multiplied by another, resulting in another prime – it’s a secure process,” explained Carolina.

In her talk, the IMPA researcher also told the story of Sophie Germain, a French mathematician who assumed a male persona in order to study mathematics. She worked with Number Theory and has made important contributions to the field to this day.

Virtual Egyptian tomb

Continuing the Festival program, Visgraf, IMPA’s Computer Graphics Laboratory, presented the process of creating, developing and producing the Neferhotep 360 Virtual Reality video. The project was created in partnership with the National Museum’s Digital Image Processing Laboratory (LAPID), BioDesign (PUC-Rio) and the National Institute of Technology (INT).

Pedro Von Seehausen, an archaeologist and Egyptologist at the National Museum, explained the work in Egypt. “In the excavation process, all the fragments are sifted and separated, so as not to lose anything. It’s as if we were inspecting a crime scene, it’s a meticulous job where every detail can bring new data, information.”

Neferhotep’s tomb is located in ancient Thebes, where the city of Luxor now stands. It is located on the route of a famous festival that took place at the time, the Festival of the Valley, considered the biggest event in the Theban necropolis.

“The tomb has been looted several times, and this has affected the archaeological study. What’s more, it’s not always possible to read and interpret what has been erased. The National Museum joined the excavations in 2014, and recently the coordination of the project left the University of Buenos Aires and came to us,” said Seehausen.

In order to preserve the documentation of archaeological studies and promote scientific dissemination in an interactive way, the idea arose to create an experience that transports visitors to Ancient Egypt. The virtual tour of Neferhotep’s tomb was created using 360º recordings of the tomb.

“Thanks to IMPA’s work, they were able to produce a narrative from the recording and digitization processes,” he said.

Bernardo Alevato, Visgraf’s designer, explained how the recordings were transformed into an immersive experience designed to educate and entertain. “We worked together. I don’t understand Egyptology, but I do understand media. In dialog, we worked with Neferhotep to create a 360° video in documentary format. We tried to show how the excavation work works,” he said.

The purpose of the video is to create an immersive experience. It’s a participatory project with an interdisciplinary approach, using mathematics, Egyptology, history, paleontology and new visual media. The Space-XR Expanded Reality Space is open to the public at #FestMat until this Saturday (7).

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