Re: Had an idea - looking for a math buff to tell me if it's possible?with today's technology.

[Brett Frankenberger <rbf+nanog () panix com>]

On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 09:34:59AM -1000, Paul Graydon wrote:
> On 05/20/2011 08:53 AM, Brett Frankenberger wrote:
> > On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 06:46:45PM +0000, Eu-Ming Lee wrote:
> > > To do this, you only need 2 numbers: the nth digit of pi and the number of
> > > digits.
> > >
> > > Simply convert your message into a single extremely long integer. Somewhere,
> > > in the digits of pi, you will find a matching series of digits the same as
> > > your integer!
> > >
> > > Decompressing the number is relatively easy after some sort-of recent
> > > advances in our understanding of pi.
> > >
> > > Finding out what those 2 numbers are--- well, we still have a ways to go
> > > on that.
> > Even if those problems were solved, you'd need (on average) just as
> > many bits to represent which digit of pi to start with as you'd need to
> > represent the original message.

> Not quite sure I follow that. "Start at position xyz, carry on for
> 10000 bits" shouldn't be as long as telling it all 10000 bits?

I don't know about "should", but it *will* be when "xyz" is greater
than 2^10000 (or about 10^3000).  Your intuition is probably telling
you that "xyz" won't likely be a 3000 digit (or longer) number, but if
so, your intuition is wrong.

     -- Brett