Chapter 896 Matrix of Symbols

It is said that humans did not feel any obstacles when disassembling the complete alien machine.

There is no special structure that humans often use when manufacturing machinery that "cannot be restored after disassembly". The simplest and most straightforward assembly process is adopted. All parts can be easily disassembled, and the specifications are mostly the same as the complete parts of those small machines outside, and the processing technology is almost the same.

I think the aliens don't care that their technology will be copied by civilizations on other planets?

Or, it may be because these machines can only be manufactured and assembled to this extent?

Moreover, the imitation process is also very smooth.

When the aliens designed it, they seemed to have taken the design idea of ​​"making the machine work in an environment with large part tolerances as much as possible", and the materials of the entire 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 they are asked to scan and record them one by one, it is difficult to copy it again.

Some machines are indeed so complicated that "it is difficult to disassemble completely without drawings", and some parts do have "prone to deformation during disassembly, which will affect the measurement results". But even if these are not considered, there are huge difficulties in copying unknown machines.

Because reality is not ideal.

There are dimensional requirements for the design of a part, but the design size is often marked with a sign such as "±**mm". 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, so there must be an error. When designing the whole machine, the error of other parts that cooperate with this part will be taken into account, that is, the "tolerance".

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

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

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

This is probably a 3D printer - it can only be said to be roughly, because there are many parts that humans have not yet figured out what they are used for. But from the laser emission device, the feeding device, and the coolant delivery device that affects the formation of crystals, as well as the magnetic field and sound field generating device, this is indeed a mature machine.

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

Humans can clearly see the design ideas and inherent logic of these components from the creations of alien civilizations - of course, some components are too unfamiliar to human civilization. Perhaps it is due to the blind spots in human thinking that humans cannot see their specific functions for the time being.

Then, the next question facing human civilization is also very obvious.

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

These two questions may be reduced to one question - "how does the machine use the information in these alien copper plates to maintain its work".

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

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

Do hundreds of MB of information include a complete industrial production system?

No matter how you think about it, it is unlikely.

But in reality, the aliens almost succeeded.

Although the mechanical activities inside this spacecraft stopped thousands or even tens of thousands of years ago, they had been running successfully for a longer time before that.

The age of the 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, these robots even know how to maintain this spacecraft.

Their design drawings, assembly processes, material information, and AI, all added up, only have a few hundred MB.

Maybe the data volume is only a dozen photos.

Hundreds of MB...

Ingrid's comment on this is: "I don't think these symbols can be measured by 'code'. They are obviously not codes. Codes, like human language, are linear and one-dimensional. But this is at least a two-dimensional symbol system, and it may be three-dimensional."

Xiangshan immediately came to Ingrid: "Elaborate, elaborate."

"Language is a linear thing, because time is linear. When humans speak, language is arranged into words and sentences along time. In fact, the symbol system of words, when it falls on paper, can be non-linear." Ingrid thought for a moment: "In East Asia, there were "Poems on a Plate" and "Xuan Ji Tu", which are non-linear word games. Especially "Xuan Ji Tu", it is very delicate."

Xiangshan seemed to have a big question mark on his head.

"Uh... sorry." Ingrid hurriedly added the explanation: "Xuan Ji Diagram is a special kind of... it's called a palindrome, right? The original poem has 840 characters, 29 characters vertically and 29 characters horizontally, and the middle is empty. The square array can be read vertically, horizontally, diagonally, alternately, forwardly, backwards, or one character back and forth to form a poem. The poems can be three, four, five, six, or seven characters long. Now it can be counted to form about 7,958 poems."

"In this matrix of text, the two-dimensional spatial relationship between symbols is also meaningful. Language is one-dimensional, and a word often only has a linear connection with the content before and after it. The first word of your first sentence and the second word of the second sentence and the third word of the third sentence will not be in other people's consciousness. , forming a new sentence and producing an independent meaning unrelated to the original content, but the text written on the two-dimensional medium does not necessarily need to follow such rules. "

Seeing Xiangshan still thinking, Ingrid said: "Maybe... if I say 'crossword puzzle', you may understand it better?"

"Hiss..." Xiangshan nodded: "You underestimate me too much, I understand it completely."

"The reading rules on those alien stone tablets may be more complicated." Ingrid said: "If there is a symbol of 'the next termination symbol is invalid' in the symbol, then the reading rules of this stone tablet can be even more terrifying. This is simply a maze. Even if we can disassemble each row and each group of symbols, it may be difficult to make the machine really work. "