Cyber Heroes

It is said that humans experienced no obstacles when dismantling the complete alien machine.

There is no special structure that is commonly used by humans when manufacturing machinery that cannot be restored after disassembly. It adopts the simplest and most straightforward assembly process. All parts can be easily disassembled, and the specifications are the same as those of complete parts on small machines outside. Most of them are in common and the processing technology is almost the same.

Presumably, aliens don’t care that their technology will be copied by civilizations on other planets, right?

Or maybe it's because these machines can only do this level of manufacturing and assembly?

Moreover, the imitation process is also very smooth.

When designing Alienware, it seems that the design idea was to "make the machine work in an environment with large component tolerances as much as possible", and the materials of the entire machine are unusually unified.

Sometimes, even if every part of a precision instrument is disassembled and placed in front of another group of people and asked to scan and record one by one, it is difficult to reproduce it.

Some machinery is indeed so complex that "it is difficult to completely disassemble without drawings", and some parts are indeed "easy to deform during the disassembly process, and the measurement results will be affected." But even if you don't take these into account, there are still huge difficulties in replicating unknown machinery.

Because reality is not ideal.

There are dimensional requirements for the design of a part, but the design dimensions are often followed by a mark 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 overall machinery, the errors of other parts that match this part will be taken into account, that is, "tolerances."

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

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

And so are the materials. Many parts have different requirements for material strength, toughness, and elasticity, and they cannot be copied just by knowing the dimensions.

This is probably a 3D printer - I can only say roughly, because there are many parts, and humans have not yet figured out what they are used for. But judging from the laser emitting device, feeding device, coolant conveying device that probably affects crystallization, and magnetic field and sound field generating devices, this is indeed a mature machine.

At this point, humans have confirmed one thing. This unknown alien civilization shares similar logic with humans.

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

Then, the next problem facing human civilization is obvious.

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

These two questions may be boiled down to one question - "How does the machine use the information in these alien copper plates to maintain its work?"

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

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

Does a few hundred MB of information include a complete industrial production system?

No matter how you think about it, it's unlikely.

But realistically speaking, those aliens almost succeeded.

Although the mechanical activities inside the spacecraft had ceased thousands or even tens of thousands of years ago, they had successfully operated for a longer period of time before.

The age of those 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 repair marks on the main part of the spacecraft.

Apparently, these robots even know how to maintain the spacecraft.

Their design drawings, assembly processes, material information, and AI, all added together, only amount to a few hundred MB.

It may only be as much data as a dozen photos.

Several hundred MB...

Ingrid's comment on this is: "I don't think this can be used as a 'code' to measure these symbols. They are obviously not codes. Codes, like human language, are linear and one-dimensional. But at least It’s also a two-dimensional symbol system, maybe it’s still three-dimensional.”

Xiang Shan immediately came to Ingrid's side: "Tell me more, tell me more."

"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 does not need to be linear when it is placed on paper." Ingrid thought Moment: "In East Asia, there were "Poems on a Plate" and "Xuanji Pictures", which were non-linear word games. Especially "Xuanji Pictures" is very exquisite."

A big question mark seemed to appear on Xiang Shan's head.

"Uh... I'm sorry." Ingrid hurriedly added the explanation: "The Xuanji Picture is a special... thing called a palindrome poem, right? The original poem has a total of 840 characters, 20 vertically and 20 horizontally. Nine characters, the middle one is empty, the square array can be read vertically, horizontally, obliquely, alternately, forward or reverse, or read one character backward or overlapping one character, and it can become a poem. The poems can have three, four, five, six or seven words. , the current statistics can form approximately 7958 poems."

"In this matrix of words, 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. Your first sentence The first word of ", the second word of the second sentence, and the third word of the third sentence will not be connected to form a new sentence in other people's consciousness, producing independent meanings that have nothing to do with the original content. But text written on a two-dimensional medium does not necessarily need to follow such rules."

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

"Hiss..." Xiang Shan nodded: "You underestimate me, I completely understand."

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