CHAPTER 897: CHAPTER 142 MORE QUESTIONS

Xiang Shan roughly understood.

Or rather, the only thing that momentarily bewildered Xiang Shan was the example Ingrid presented.

He hadn’t expected to hear such a... strange example in this context.

However, aside from that, there seems to be nothing more valuable.

It can only be said that any professional, when outside their own field of expertise, is no wiser than a layperson.

Although in Ingrid’s eyes, the aliens’ way of writing is extremely interesting, in the end, it’s just a compression algorithm.

And this does not explain the problem Xiang Shan is currently pondering.

"How are all the design drawings, assembly processes, material manufacturing parameters of alien machinery, plus their operating AI, compressed to a level of two to three hundred MB?"

The aliens used two types of compression algorithms.

One can roughly be called the "dictionary algorithm," which means "using dictionary codes to replace frequently occurring combinations." Humans also use this method. Of course, if the "dictionary" is made very large, then the data body can be compressed very small. But sometimes, there arises a situation where the "dictionary is larger than the data body."

The aliens probably chose an optimal value to ensure the size of "body+dictionary" is minimal.

Then there’s the two-dimensional symbol matrix Ingrid mentioned.

But no matter how it’s done, lossless compression of information must have its limits.

And no matter how extravagantly the aliens design the reading rules of this two-dimensional matrix algorithm, it has an "upper limit."

As Inga said, if you add one more symbol indicating "next stop/direction symbol is invalid," you can increase the number of reading paths but will also introduce many symbols with no other meaning besides indicating "next stop/direction symbol invalid," and the "dictionary" collection has to add items.

The increase in "reading paths" leads to "too many symbols related only to reading rules" and "dictionary" expansion.

Just like the dictionary algorithm, ultimately, the size of the "reading rules" might exceed the size of the data body.

There’s a balance point here as well.

According to Xiang Shan’s estimate, there might only be a few symbols related to reading rules, not too many.

And the two-dimensional symbol matrix has another problem. Like a "crossword puzzle," a symbol at a spatial coordinate is restricted by content from four directions. This makes information expression less free than one-dimensional text.

"Let’s take the example you mentioned..." Xiang Shan said: "Although that ancient poet compressed 7,958 poems into 840 characters, I’m sure if these nearly 8,000 poems were separated, none would become timeless, perhaps with some... issues with metrics and rhyme."

Ingrid was curious: "It looks like you just learned about this thing..."

"If poems extracted from that word game were excellent, they’d surely be in textbooks. Then I’d have some impression." Xiang Shan was confident about this point: "Upon reflection, ancient times probably didn’t have punctuation and the segmentation was left to later generations to guess..."

Ingrid covered her face: "I suppose you’re trying to say ’punctuation and reading’."

Xiang Shan ignored Ingrid’s prompt: "Look, from this perspective, this kind of word game leads to significant information loss with compression, and efficiency is so-so. It’s not even ’compressing any 8,000 poems,’ if judging by the labels of compression algorithms... hsss..."

Xiang Shan seemed to realize something...

-- It’s not "compressing any 8,000 poems"... not necessarily compression...

-- What...

Xiang Shan seemed to have thought of something, but that inspiration conflicted with his long-standing thinking. This hard-earned idea slipped away from Xiang Shan’s consciousness and disappeared.

Xiang Shan stood up, scratching his head: "What was I just saying..."

Ingrid, sitting on the stool, looked up at her suddenly neurotic friend: "Um... ’according to compression algorithm labels’?"

"According to compression algorithm standards, there’s nothing remarkable about this stuff..." Xiang Shan continued to ponder: "Information impervious to distortion... why is that..."

No...

It should be said that this information is definitely not "impervious to distortion."

Otherwise, the aliens could have used storage methods with higher information density instead of this symbol slab.

Using this symbol slab implies that those aliens are also very afraid of noise caused by accidents. They chose methods with high noise resistance but low information density.

Noise resistance, information density, "dictionary" and "reading order rules," and the possible information loss during compression...

"Still can’t figure it out..." Xiang Shan said softly.

In fact, this problem has almost troubled everyone in the Rama Project.

Progress in this aspect has almost stagnated.

Fortunately, "researching alien legacy" is a huge project that can be split into many sub-projects. Poor progress in this area does not affect advancement in other areas.

For instance, researchers from Europe have used recorded "last positions of scrapped robots" to infer what happened to Argon during its landing on Earth.

Based on simulation calculations, these machines were completely scrapped very early on. Yet simultaneously, Argon’s engines had long ceased functioning, with the overall body having virtually no acceleration, causing these scrapped robots to cluster in the rear half of Argon, experiencing slight degradation as time passed.

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

In other words, these scrapped robots were originally concentrated on the side of Argon near the engines.

They were likely programmed to be scrapped.

But this raises a brand new issue.

"Why did these robots come to a standstill?"

Argon still contains many raw materials. These robots were even heavily constructed using alloys with low recycling costs. Therefore, this cycle of "generation replicating generation" shouldn’t have reached an abrupt end.

Even the stored fission fuel in Argon hasn’t been consumed completely.

This cycle process has not reached its theoretical limit.

Something must have gone wrong.

But on the other hand, humans haven’t found traces that prove "malfunction."

Perhaps evidence vanished during the descent.

Or, maybe the form of standstill was somewhat beyond imagination?