I wonder if it is really possible to scan all the bits and have software auto assemble at least some of the bits. I'm not sure how far you could get, and if scanning that many tiny fragments would even work.
Yeah but that's not as fun.
Pretty optimistic it would. As a matter of fact, I find it hard to believe they're doing it by hand.
I can imagine how this is done with the standard jigsaw puzzles with four corners on each piece, kind of like hashing the edges such that female and male versions of the edge have hashes that can be related. But pieces that can be any shape at all... I'm not sure.
This is a major archeological find. Essentially a Roman villa with frescoed walls whose color is in great condition. Unfortunately the walls are broken into thousands of pieces.
The conservators are also racing against time to preserve the cinnabar/vermillion red of the frescoes. This ancient red pigment darkens over time for largely unknown reasons, but was preserved on these fragments while they lay under sand and rubble for 2000 years.
One of the most amazing things I learned recently was that the terracotta warriors in Xi'an were colored as well and met a similar fate shortly after the sculptures were exposed to atmosphere.
In Snowcrash he just asked his AI do reassemble the shattered tablet. I wonder if they've tried that yet...
And now they have a shattered tablet under a mountain of paper clips.
This reminds me of piecing together the remnants of the Forma Urbis Romae - a huge marble map of ancient Rome that gradually was destroyed over time.