A Toroidal Beacon Protocol for Exploratory Trans-Temporal Signal Decoding Using Binarized Heatmaps

TORUS is an exploratory research project that introduces a passive informational beacon protocol based on persistent physical–digital patterns. The project investigates whether structured artifacts derived from experimental heatmaps can be recognized, decoded, and potentially interpreted across different temporal or causal frameworks. This entry documents the methodology used to generate heatmaps from time-series sensor data, their binarization via Otsu thresholding, and the subsequent extraction and decoding of binary sequences using non-adaptive protocols. TORUS also introduces the concept of a "Quantum Turing Test" as a heuristic framework to distinguish structured outputs from stochastic noise. All results are exploratory and presented without claims of retrocausality. The project aims to provide a transparent, reproducible framework for studying the boundary between noise, pattern, and interpretation. Results and associated materials are archived and auto-uploaded to Zenodo.