Chapter 897 More Questions

Xiangshan probably understood.

In other words, the only thing that made Xiang Shan confused for a moment was the example given by Ingrid.

He didn't expect to hear such a...strange example on such an occasion.

But apart from that, there doesn't seem to be anything more valuable.

It can only be said that any professional, after going beyond his or her professional field, is no wiser than the average person.

Although the way these aliens wrote was interesting to Ingrid, at the end of the day it was a compression algorithm.

And this cannot explain the problem Xiangshan is thinking about now.

"How can all the design drawings, assembly processes, and material manufacturing parameters of the alien machinery, plus the AI ​​running on them, be compressed to the level of two to three hundred MB together?"

Alienware uses two compression algorithms.

One can be roughly called a "dictionary algorithm", which means "combining frequently occurring permutations to create a corresponding dictionary, and then replacing the combination with the numbered code in the dictionary." This method is also used by humans. Of course, if the "dictionary" is made large, the data ontology can be compressed very small. But sometimes, there will be a situation where "the dictionary is larger than the data ontology".

The aliens probably chose a just right value to ensure that the size of the "ontology + dictionary" is the smallest.

The other is the two-dimensional symbol matrix that Ingrid mentioned.

But no matter what, there must be a limit to lossless compression of information.

As for this two-dimensional matrix algorithm, no matter how fancy the aliens design the reading rules, there is an "upper limit" for it.

As Yingjia said, if you add one more symbol that says "next termination/direction symbol is invalid", you can certainly increase the number of read routes, but it will lead to a large number of symbols mixed with symbols other than "next termination/direction symbol". Symbols that have no meaning other than "invalid", and items must be added to the "dictionary" collection.

The increase in "reading routes" will lead to "too many symbols that are only related to reading rules" and the expansion of the "dictionary".

Just like the dictionary algorithm, in the end, there will also be a problem that the size of the "read rules" is larger than the size of the data body.

There is also a balance point here.

According to Xiangshan's estimation, there may only be a few symbols for reading rules, not too many.

There is another problem with the two-dimensional symbol matrix. Just like a "crossword puzzle", a symbol on a spatial coordinate is subject to content from four directions. On the contrary, this makes the expression of information not as free as one-dimensional text.

"Let's use the example you gave..." Xiang Shan said: "Although the ancient poet compressed 7,958 poems in 840 words, I am sure that these 7,000 Of the 900 or nearly 8,000 poems, if taken individually, none of them can be passed down through the ages. Maybe there is still something...the meter and rhyme are not so neat."

Ingrid was a little curious: "You look like you just found out about this stuff..."

"If the poem extracted from that word game is good enough, it will definitely be included in the textbook. Then I will definitely be impressed." Xiang Shan is very convinced on this point: "If you think about it carefully, in ancient times, there were probably no punctuation marks, and sentences had to be broken. It’s up to future generations to guess…”

Ingrid covered her face: "I guess you want to say 'sentence reading'."

Xiangshan ignored Ingrid's prompt: "Look, from this point of view, this word game has a great loss in compressing information, and the efficiency is only that. It's not even 'compressing any eight thousand poems' , judging from the annotation of the compression algorithm...hiss..."

Xiangshan seemed to realize something...

——Not "compressed any 8,000 songs"...not necessarily compressed...

--What……

Xiangshan seemed to have thought of something. But that "what" inspiration conflicted with what he had been thinking. This hard-won idea just slipped from Xiangshan's consciousness and disappeared.

Xiang Shan stood up and scratched his head: "What am I going to say..."

Ingrid sat on the stool and looked up at her suddenly nervous friend: "That...'based on the labeling of the compression algorithm'?"

"Based on the standards of compression algorithms, this thing is nothing special..." Xiang Shan continued to think: "Information that is not afraid of distortion... Why..."

No……

It should be said that this information is definitely not "unafraid of distortion".

Otherwise, the aliens could use a storage method with higher information density instead of this symbolic slate.

The use of this symbolic slate means that those aliens are also very afraid of accidental noises. They chose a method that is highly resistant to noise but low in information density.

Noise immunity, information density, "dictionary" and "reading order rules" and "compression rate", as well as information that may be lost during the compression process...

"I still can't figure it out..." Xiang Shan whispered.

In fact, this problem plagued almost everyone who stayed on the Rama project.

Progress on this front has all but stalled.

Fortunately, "Research on Extraterrestrial Heritage" is a huge project that can be divided into many sub-projects. The poor progress in this area will not affect the progress in other areas.

For example, researchers from Europe used the recorded "last position of the scrapped robot" to speculate on what "Ogun" experienced when it landed on the earth.

According to simulation calculations, these machines were all scrapped very early. But at the same time, Ogun's engine had stopped working long ago, and the whole body had almost no acceleration, so these scrapped robots were in a state of weightlessness, lying on the back half of Ogun, and slightly deteriorated as time passed.

Finally, these scrapped robots collided violently during artificial acceleration and deceleration.

In other words, these scrapped robots were originally concentrated on the side of Ogun close to the engine.

They were probably scrapped according to the program.

But this brings up a whole new question.

"Why did these robots stop working?"

There are still many raw materials in Ogun. And these robots also use a lot of alloys with very low recycling costs. The material is as uniform as possible to reduce the difficulty of recycling. Therefore, this cycle of "copying one generation from one generation" should not be cut off yet.

Even the fission fuel stored in Ogun has not been consumed.

This cycle has not reached its theoretical limit.

It must have gone wrong.

But on the other hand, humans have not found any traces to prove the "failure".

Perhaps the evidence has been lost in the process of landing.

Or perhaps the form of the shutdown is beyond imagination?