How would/does reverse engineering work?

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Say we found an artifact or piece of technology that wasnt created by humans. How would we go about reverse engineering it? How do technology companies reverse engineer competitors ideas?

In: Engineering

12 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are some things that are going to be common just because of the physics of things… Although just because we can figure out WHAT it is doing does not mean we can replicate it. There may be materials that we do not have the processes to make, although knowing something is possible is half the battle.

Also, a complex piece of equipment would take longer to figure out. Let’s say we found a functioning tricorder, I am sure we could figure out the sensor inputs, probably figure out how to decode the output. But let’s say they figured out how to tap into “zero point energy” using a contained micro black hole for the power source. Well I think that even though we figured out what they are doing, we would still need to figure out how to generate the micro black hole in the first place. That might require a total rethink of current physics research. It might require a whole new take on material construction. And so it goes.

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