In other words, the only thing that made Xiang Shan confused for a moment was the example Ingrid gave.
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 will not be smarter than the average person after going beyond his or her professional field.
Although in Ingrid's eyes, the way these aliens write is extremely interesting, in the final analysis, it is a compression algorithm.
And this cannot explain the problem Xiang Shan 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 the "dictionary algorithm", which means "combine frequently occurring permutations to create a corresponding dictionary, and then replace the combination with the numbered code in the dictionary." This method is also used by humans. Of course, if
If the "dictionary" is made very large, then the data ontology can be compressed very small. But sometimes, a situation will arise 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 minimized.
The other is this 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 "The 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 "the next termination/direction symbol".
Symbols that have no other meaning other than "invalid", items must also 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".
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.
The two-dimensional symbol matrix also has another problem. Just like a "crossword puzzle", a symbol on a spatial coordinate is restricted by content from four directions. This makes the expression of information not like one-dimensional text.
So free.
"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
There are nine hundred, almost eight thousand poems. If you take them out 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 in 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 was probably no punctuation mark, 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 the inspiration of that "what" conflicted with his previous 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 friend who suddenly became nervous: "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 the aliens are also very afraid of noise caused by accidents. They have chosen a method that is extremely noise-resistant but has low information density.
Noise immunity, information density, "dictionary" and "reading order rules" and "compression rate", as well as the information that may be lost during the compression process...
"I still can't figure it out..." Xiang Shan whispered.
In fact, this problem troubled almost everyone who stayed on the Rama project.
Progress on this front has almost stalled.
Fortunately, "Research on Extraterrestrial Heritage" is a huge project that can be divided into many sub-projects. The poor progress in this area does 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, all these machines were scrapped very early. But at the same time, Ogun's engine had stopped working long ago, and there was almost no acceleration overall, so these scrapped robots were concentrated in a weightless state.
In the second half of Ogun, there is a slight deterioration as this goes on.
Finally, these scrapped robots violently collided with artificial acceleration and deceleration.
In other words, these scrapped robots were originally concentrated on the side of Ogun near the engine.
They were most likely scrapped according to procedure.
But this raises a whole new question.
"Why are these robots shutting down?"
There are many raw materials in Ogun. And these robots also use a large amount of alloys with very low recycling costs. The materials are as uniform as possible to reduce the difficulty of recycling. Therefore, this cycle of "copying one generation from another" should not be cut off yet.
when.
Even the fissile fuel stored in Ogun has not been exhausted.
This cyclic process has not reached its theoretical limit.
There must be something wrong with it.
But on the other hand, humans have not found any traces that can prove "fault".
Perhaps the evidence had disappeared during the landing.
Or maybe the form of the shutdown is a bit beyond imagination?