Cyber ​​Heroes

Chapter 896 The Matrix of Symbols

It is said that human beings felt no hindrance when dismantling that complete alien machine.

There is no special structure that "cannot be restored after being disassembled" commonly used by humans when manufacturing machinery. The simplest and straightforward assembly process is adopted. All parts can be easily disassembled, and the specifications are the same as those of the complete parts on the small machines outside. Most of them are common, and the processing technology is almost the same.

If you want to come to aliens, you don't care that your technology will be copied by civilizations on other planets, right?

Or, maybe it's because these machines can only be manufactured and assembled to such a degree?

Moreover, the imitation process is also very smooth.

When the aliens were designing, they seemed to follow the design idea of ​​"making the machine work in an environment with large tolerances of parts as much as possible", and the materials of the whole machine were unusually uniform.

Sometimes, even if every part of a precision instrument is disassembled and placed in front of another group of people, and let them scan and record one by one, it is difficult to reproduce one.

Some machines are indeed so complicated that "it is difficult to disassemble completely without drawings", and some parts are indeed "prone to deformation during the disassembly process, and the measurement results will be affected".But even without considering these, there are huge difficulties in replicating unknown machines.

Because reality is not ideal.

There are size requirements for the design of a part, but a sign such as "±**mm" is often marked after the design size.Although the design size of this part is a fixed value, in actual processing, it is impossible for all parts to be exactly this value, and there must be an error.When the machine is designed as a whole, it will take into account the error of other parts that cooperate with this part, that is, "tolerance".

As long as the error of a part is within the tolerance range, the part is a qualified part.

All parts of machinery have such tolerances.Even if humans obtain an unknown machine, they can only measure the precise dimensions of the parts on this machine, and it is difficult to know the range of tolerance.

And so is the material.Many parts have different requirements for the strength, toughness, and elasticity of the material, and they cannot be copied by knowing the size.

This is probably a 3D printer——I can only say roughly, because there are many parts, and humans have not yet figured out what they are for.But judging from the laser emitting device, feeding device, cooling agent delivery device, magnetic field and sound field generating device, this is indeed a mature machine.

So far, humans have confirmed one thing.This unknown alien civilization shares similar logic with human beings.

Human beings can clearly see the design ideas of these components from the creations of alien civilizations, and see their inherent logic—of course, some components are too unfamiliar to human civilization.Perhaps it is due to the blind spot of human thinking all the time, and human beings cannot see their specific functions for the time being.

Then, the next problem facing human civilization is also obvious.

That is, "how does this mechanism work" and "what is recorded in the alien copper plate".

These two problems may be boiled down to one question - "how on earth do machines use the information in these alien copper plates to maintain their jobs".

In any case, the information on these copper plates is really too little.

Although those aliens used special symbols to increase the information density of the copper plate, if those symbols were stored by a computer, they would only be about a few hundred MB.

Does the information of a few hundred MB include a complete industrial production system?
Not likely anyway.

But in reality, those aliens almost succeeded.

Although the mechanical activities inside the spaceship had stopped thousands or even tens of thousands of years ago, they had successfully operated for a longer period of time before.

The age of those mechanical wreckage, the age of this 3D printer, and the age of the main part of the spacecraft are all very different.

Even humans have observed that there are many traces of repairs on the main part of the spacecraft.

Apparently, the robots even knew how to maintain the ship.

Their design drawings, assembly process, material information, and AI, all added together, only a few hundred MB.

It may be the amount of data of a dozen photos.

Hundreds of MB...

In this regard, Ingrid's evaluation is: "I don't think this can be measured by 'codes'. They are obviously not codes. Codes, like human languages, are linear and one-dimensional. But at least It’s also a two-dimensional symbol system, maybe it’s still three-dimensional.”

Xiang Shan immediately moved to Ingrid's side: "Say it in detail, tell it in detail."

"Language is a linear thing, because time is linear. When human beings speak, language is arranged into words along time. In fact, the symbol system of words may not be linear when it falls on paper." Ingrid thought For a moment: "In East Asia, there used to be "Poetry on the Plate" and "Xuan Ji Tu", which are non-linear word games. Especially "Xuan Ji Tu", it is very delicate."

A big question mark seemed to appear on Xiang Shan's head.

"Uh... sorry." Ingrid hastily added an explanation: "Xuan Ji Tu is a special... something called palindromic poetry, right? The original poem has 840 characters in total, 29 characters in length and width, and the last The middle is empty, and the square matrix can be read vertically, horizontally, obliquely, alternately, forwardly, backwardly, or one word at a time, or one word at a time. Poems have three, four, five, six, or seven words, and today's statistics are about Seven thousand nine hundred and fifty eight poems can be formed."

"In this kind of matrix of words, the two-dimensional spatial relationship between symbols is also meaningful. Language is one-dimensional, and a word often only has a linear relationship with the content before and after it. Your first sentence The first word in the second sentence, the second word in the second sentence, and the third word in the third sentence will not be connected into a new sentence in the consciousness of others, producing an independent meaning that has nothing to do with the original content. But text written on two-dimensional media does not necessarily need to follow such rules.”

Seeing that Xiang Shan was still thinking, Ingrid said, "Maybe... I said 'crossword puzzle', maybe you can understand it better?"

"Hiss..." Xiang Shan nodded, "You underestimate me, I fully understand."

"The reading rules on those alien steles may be more complicated." Ingrid said: "If there is a symbol of 'the next termination symbol is invalid' among the symbols, then the reading rules of this stele can become even more terrifying .This is simply a maze. Even if we can disassemble each row and each group of symbols, I am afraid it will be difficult to make the machine work."

(End of this chapter)