After deflating and folding the assault boat on the beach, Zhang Zian drove back to the pet shop, satisfied. He didn't need to return the underwater sound recorder to Professor Weikang yet, because he didn't know if the recorded sound was complete. Although he didn't understand whale language, he knew that language was complicated. It was impossible to learn it just by listening to a few words.
If Sihwa said that the recorded sound was not long enough, then he would have to repeat what he did that day until she was satisfied.
"Master, you're back. Godzilla … No, did you record the sound you wanted to record?" Wang Qian ran over and picked up the battery, asking some strange questions.
"Well, I've probably recorded it. I'll make a copy after I edit it. You can take it to Li Kun and let him play it as background music in the aquarium," Zhang Zian instructed. At the same time, he carried a full set of underwater sound equipment and walked to the second floor.
Wang Qian agreed and returned to the shop to charge the battery.
Pi had just finished writing a chapter and was stretching and walking back and forth in the living room.
"Pi, I'll use the computer. I'll be done in a while."
"Eeek."
Zhang Zian took out the memory card from the device and installed a sound analysis software on the computer. He then imported the original audio file from the memory card.
The sound was converted into a waveform and output on the screen, but it was very messy. It was like a thousand stock K-line charts being displayed at the same time. It was dazzling.
He studied the use of the software and used a filter to filter out all the high-frequency sounds. The screen immediately became much cleaner, but there were still hundreds of curves left.
Then, he dragged the timeline further and found the position at the end of the audio file.
He roughly remembered when the giant whale's sound appeared. By comparing the time it appeared and ended, he further eliminated more than 90% of the noise, leaving only a few curves.
Due to his lack of experience, the remaining curves could not be easily eliminated using the sound chart. He simply used the stupid method of selecting the curves one by one and playing them.
Dong …
Da …
Ka …
Ding …
Hiss …
All kinds of sounds came from the laptop's weak speaker. Some of the sounds were beyond the human ear's hearing range and could only be heard after being enhanced by the software.
It was strange. He had been very focused at the time, but when he heard these sounds, he still felt very strange, as if he had never heard them before.
"Zhi zhi."
Pi scratched its ears and cheeks, as if itching all over its body. Obviously, the strange sounds made it uncomfortable. In the end, it simply covered its ears, jumped into the hammock chair, and covered its head with a pillow.
Wu — —
A familiar voice sounded.
Zhang Zian's heartbeat suddenly accelerated.
It couldn't be wrong! This was the voice he had heard at that time! Like a train whistle, the sound grew stronger and weaker periodically, occasionally mixed with the clatter of train wheels rolling over the rail joints.
When he finally found it, he held down the left mouse button and did not dare to let go, afraid that the curve would be drowned out by other curves. Instead, he dragged it to create a new window.
In the new window, the curve was shaped like a periodically rising mountain, with one side steep and the other relatively flat. The mountain had several undulating peaks, which was the sharpest part of the whistle, and the highest point often corresponded to the clanging sound.
The X-axis represented time, and the Y-axis represented the frequency of the sound.
He shifted his gaze and looked at the Y axis.
"Hmm?"
He was stunned.
Only a few kinds of whales could grow to such a large size. Excluding the right whale, which had keratinoma on its head, and excluding toothed whales like the sperm whale, there were not many choices left.
Zhang Zian had thought that the giant whale was a blue whale or a fin whale, but the number on the Y axis indicated that he had guessed completely wrong.
The frequency of the blue whale's sound was basically between 15 and 40 Hertz, mainly concentrated within 15 to 20 Hertz. In recent years, because of the excessive noise that humans had made in the ocean, there was evidence that the blue whale's sound frequency was gradually shifting to a lower frequency, getting closer and closer to 15 Hertz to avoid conflict with human noise.
The fin whale's sound frequency was even narrower, between 15 and 25 Hertz, mainly concentrated around 20 Hertz.
The range of human hearing was 20 to 20,000 Hertz. Without the help of equipment, humans could basically not hear the sounds of blue whales and fin whales.
However, the Y axis on the screen corresponded to a frequency range between 45 and 50 Hertz, which was a frequency that the human ear could hear directly.
Strange. Was there something wrong? Wasn't this curve the sound curve of the giant whale?
Some whales had a wide range of sound frequencies that could cover this range, but those whales could not grow to such a large size.
Zhang Zian thought about it for a while. The most normal and reasonable explanation was that when he was recording the giant whale, there was another whale of a different kind hiding in the nearby sea. He thought that it was the giant whale's sound, but it was actually the sound of another whale.
But was there such a coincidence?
If that was the case, then where did the curve of the giant whale's sound go?
He switched back to the original window and played the remaining curves one by one. What gave him a headache was that he could not determine whether the sound was made by a whale or not.
If only there was a senior submarine sonar technician here. He would definitely be able to tell him what was making these sounds.
He was a little depressed. He had thought that he would be able to get it done in one go, but now it seemed that he would have to go and record the sound the next day. He hoped that there would not be a mistake next time …
Wait, was there really a mistake?
He tried not to let go of every possibility.
What if there was no mistake? What if the recording tomorrow was still this abnormal sound curve?
There could not always be a mysterious whale that never showed its face following the giant whale all the time, right?
There was an ultimate method of elimination called "Occam's Razor." The simplest expression of this law was, "If it is not necessary, do not increase the number of entities."
The truth was simple, and the simpler, the better.
Specifically, when two hypotheses had exactly the same explanatory and predictive power, we would use the simpler hypothesis as the basis for the discussion.
Zhang Zian became alert and realized that he was making a mistake. In order to explain the abnormal phenomenon, he had added an entity out of thin air — another mysterious whale that followed behind the giant whale and never showed its face.
Was there really a need to add this entity?
In fact, there was clearly another explanation that could achieve the same effect — the sound of the giant whale was like this, and there was no other mysterious whale.
Which of the two explanations was simpler? Obviously, it was the latter.
The sharp Occam's Razor flashed coldly, cutting the former into pieces.
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