Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 1616 Deciphering the Metal Plate

Thank you for accepting this gift from a distant and unknown little world, which contains our language, patterns, music, thoughts, and feelings. We are striving to live our time and thus enter yours.

This was the last greeting sent by humanity on the Golden Record. Now, along with the Golden Record and the greetings in various languages ​​contained within it, this message lies quietly gathering dust in a corner of that museum of unknown civilizations, awaiting the momentous occasion when it will be reactivated.

Now, the owners of the Golden Record, the human civilization known as the String Piper by other civilizations, are working with the Silver Heart, the Daya, and the Awakener civilizations to decipher the "Golden Record" from a civilization in a two-dimensional world.

In fact, given the current technological capabilities of several civilizations, a detailed exploration of the area near where this metal piece appeared would likely reveal the civilization in that two-dimensional world. After all, the speed of that two-dimensional detector is not very fast, and the civilization that launched it is probably in the vicinity.

However, out of curiosity, the various civilizations still intend to decipher it.

What's amazing is that this civilization's thinking is indeed very similar to that of humans back then. The instruction manual they wrote for this metal plate also used the spin-related parameters of hydrogen atoms, but not the hydrogen atoms in the three-dimensional world, but the hydrogen atoms in the two-dimensional world.

As the instruction manual was correctly read, the contents of the metal plate were also read by various civilizations.

The first thing that catches the eye of people from all civilizations is a line segment, which seems to be saying: Aliens, your interpretation is correct.

As for why they are line segments and wavy lines, it's probably because, in the eyes of beings in a two-dimensional world, the first thing they see of a star is a line segment.

The next image is a line segment diagram representing different light wave bands.

In this image, the middle of the line segment is noticeably brighter, while the ends are darker. The wavelength of light is also labeled in the middle and at both ends, seemingly telling humanity, the Daya, the Galactic Center, and the Awakener civilization—these aliens: Look, this is the star we drew.

This discovery has intrigued scientists from various civilizations, because every civilization has gone through a period of early exploration of the universe. Thus, almost every civilization saw a reflection of its former self in this metal plate, that naive and clueless version of itself.

Next, the information that the Great Voyage Organization read was a line with pits and bumps, and the distance between each pit and bump was marked in detail with parameters.

It looks like a piece of binary code.

After reading the data from this metal sheet using the same method, scientists discovered that the code appeared to be a language.

Scientists compiled these language codes into sound waves according to the reading method given on the metal plate, and then put them into different media for experiments. Finally, they found that when placed into the air medium of all known planetary environments, they got a bunch of gibberish.

Scientists then used powerful computer simulation technology to conduct matching simulations and finally obtained a mixed gas medium that met the requirements. After the sound wave code collided with the molecules of this mixed gas, it produced a clear and regular ripple.

If these ripples were drawn on a two-dimensional plane, they would appear as tadpole-like stripes, of course, from a three-dimensional perspective.

From a two-dimensional perspective, they are line segments of varying lengths. These line segments appear the same on the surface, but each segment is actually different. From a two-dimensional optical perspective, there are obvious changes in brightness.

Through this discovery, scientists from the four technological civilizations of the Great Voyage Organization can conclude that the life form of that two-dimensional civilization uses a language that relies on vibrations to propagate waves, somewhat similar to human vocalization. However, their receiving organs do not receive the wavelengths of these two-dimensional mechanical waves, but rather identify them by discerning the optical characteristics of these mechanical waves represented by line segments.

It's like when someone speaks, they exhale a rainbow, and the receiver uses their eyes to identify the color composition and arrangement of the different parts of the rainbow, thus deciphering the linguistic information contained within it.

This is very interesting. Scientists from various civilizations were very curious, so they decided to replicate the metal plate that the Galactic Center civilization saw from a three-dimensional perspective. Then, based on the information decryption method of the metal plate, they built an information reading device to "play" it out.

Creating a two-dimensional machine was naturally no challenge for the engineers of the various civilizations in the Great Voyage Organization.

They quickly created an information reading device with a specific brush head, which, if incorporated into the history of human civilization and technological development, would probably be a cassette player.

However, modern records are two-dimensional, so the playback method is definitely different.

Since the secret of the information on the metal plate had been deciphered, playing it was not a problem. So, in the following time, the high-ranking officials of the various civilizations of the Great Voyage Organization saw an animation on the screen.

The left side of the screen animation is a 3D top view, and the right side is a 2D cross-sectional view.

From a two-dimensional perspective, the metal sheet can only be seen as a line segment, a line segment with different light wave brightness in different parts.

The view from a 3D top view is much clearer. You can clearly see that the square metal plate is rotating at a specific speed, and at the same time, the brush head on the instrument is moving up and down across the pits and bumps of different shapes and depths.

It looks a bit like the effect of wheels and shock absorbers working when a car is driving on an uneven road.

The brush head went in and out of different pits, and everyone watched with great interest.

At the same time, the effect of the metal plate moving immediately became apparent. The first thing to appear was a series of straight lines with distinctly different brightness levels floating out of the instrument. From a three-dimensional top-down view, those lines were twisted and curved curves.

The curves are very regular, almost like a melodic song, at least that's what everyone thinks right now. Why "thinks"? Because there's too little information on the metal plate for anyone to decipher the language of its civilization.

However, as the metal plate rotates, some information becomes apparent.

For example, the location of civilizations in this two-dimensional world, and their physical characteristics.

Scientists compared star maps from a two-dimensional world and discovered that the two-dimensional star marked by that civilization was only a dozen light-years away from where the Great Voyage Organization's fleet is now located.

The physical characteristics of the individual life forms in that civilization are also very interesting. From a two-dimensional perspective, they are line segments with different luminosities. From a three-dimensional perspective, they are "little people in a painting" composed of closed line segments.

The lines that make up their body surfaces seem to be made of a material with elasticity. The key point is that the material reacts differently to two-dimensional light waves of different wavelengths, which is very interesting.

Upon seeing this, the scientists from various civilizations within the Great Voyage Organization became even more curious about what message these two-dimensional beings had sent to the aliens on the metal plate, because the information at the beginning and end of the metal plate was clearly in their language.

More importantly, we need to see what kind of world these two-dimensional beings live in, how they eat, drink, and excrete, and how they develop technology.

(End of this chapter)