One day...two days...
Everyone stayed in this desolate place for four days, and finally used targeted drilling methods to extract the seven strange objects. These treasures exist at a depth of more than 700 meters underground.
However, when they saw these seven objects, everyone was speechless! It is indeed a fossil! grass! This is a pebble!
After so many days of wasted effort, we dug out just a few pebbles, which really makes me speechless!
Looking at the pebbles in front of me, they are no different from those on the earth. Of course, the iron content may be a little higher, so it is a little redder. It's just that various natural reasons may have made these pebbles a bit slender, coupled with the imperfection of radiation detection technology and everyone's fantasy, this resulted in such a result.
Now I look back at those so-called seven strange places, and after rational analysis, I realize that they don't look like fish! It must have been too exciting at the time!
"Don't throw them away!" Seeing that Ding Shiyou was about to throw away the pebbles, Liu Haibo quickly stopped him. Nonsense, even pebbles are treasures! This is the most direct proof that water has existed on Mars for a long time. Although there are pebbles in the desert, they are definitely different from the pebbles in the water. This difference is clear to the eyes of experts.
In fact, ordinary people can judge it with a little understanding. The pebbles in the water are more delicate and smooth; they look fresh and translucent; while the pebbles in the desert are relatively pitted and "old".
The unwilling team members used detectors to scan the bottom of the pit for radiation, but still found no truly valuable items. Even in the sediment in the salt layer, no obvious microbial fossils visible to the naked eye have been found. Of course, no matter what it was, everyone took away a specimen weighing a full 100 kilograms. Perhaps, there will be more discoveries under the electron microscope, but at least we need to return to the base we just established. Only Gong Chuanwei has an electron microscope dedicated to scanning microorganisms.
In fact, there is a simple way to detect the presence of microorganisms, which is to heat the sediment and see if water, carbon dioxide, alkanes, etc. can appear in the sediment. However, simplicity is relative and requires professional equipment. Obviously, Liu Haibo and the others did not have these equipment.
"Keep going!" Liu Haibo's expression was also not very high. The "archaeology" that he had placed high hopes on turned out to be such a result. However, this is not so difficult to understand. The birth of life is by no means a simple accident or luck. There must be other conditions. For example, a long-term, stable natural environment that lasts for billions of years. Of course, this stability only means that there is stable liquid water. And Ceres obviously has such conditions! But Mars, which is in the habitable zone, does not have such conditions!
According to the investigation, Mars suffered a violent impact at the beginning, and then because it was too small and had insufficient gravity, it cooled too quickly, resulting in no molten core and no magnetic field; under the various effects of small gravity, solar wind and solar radiation , turned into a death star. Perhaps life simply did not have enough time to evolve on this planet.
Three days later, everyone finally arrived at 60 degrees north latitude. There is a cave at the edge, which is the "bottomless pit" observed in space. These caves are very strange, and modern exploration methods cannot penetrate the situation inside. It was as if there was a layer of mist covering it. However, scientists also speculate that there is probably a mixed "atmosphere" composed of gaseous methane, ice crystal carbon dioxide, and a small amount of water ice crystals, plus other reasons, causing this phenomenon. The reason why those detectors lost contact soon after entering the cave was probably because there were highly corrosive gases, low-temperature liquids, and extremely low temperatures.
"Back five kilometers and set up camp. Send insect robots to check the situation at the cave entrance. In addition, link to the spacecraft, inform us of the current situation, and let them help monitor this place."
Liu Haibo's orders were strictly implemented.
More than twenty insect robots, large and small, have been released. The by-products of these expert companies' intelligent research cannot be underestimated. The smallest ones are only the size of a finger, and the largest ones are no more than the size of an ordinary pigeon; but the detection capabilities of these things cannot be underestimated. look. It carries a wealth of instruments that most people cannot imagine.
Poof! A spider the size of a fist protruded with a silk thread, stabbed it into the ground, then spun the silk thread upside down and slowly slid down. Don't be surprised, this is really a robot. The silk thread is a special antenna. It hangs its own weight through a small copper wire and a strong low-temperature resistant composite fiber rope, and slowly slides deeper into the cave. This silk thread is 20 meters long, can withstand temperatures as low as minus 170 degrees, and can hang a weight of ten kilograms.
The spider-like robot carries three instruments: infrared detection, trace X-ray detection, and exquisite optical detection. Soon, a blurry black and white three-dimensional superimposed picture appeared on the computer screen. The waves undulated slightly, and bubbles emerged, but the temperature was only about 100 degrees below zero!
This is...liquid methane!
Everyone looked at each other in confusion. Everyone thought about many possibilities, but they didn't expect that this place was actually a piece of liquid methane. The liquid methane was more than seventy meters above the ground. The little spider cleverly clung to the wall and slowly climbed down. Of course, the antenna behind him fell down. But it doesn't matter, this antenna also has another function, that is - to simply detect the head! This is a multifunctional antenna.
The antenna can simply measure low temperatures above minus 170 degrees; just a few minutes later, specific news came out, it was indeed liquid methane, and the temperature was around minus 105 degrees; in addition, after the little spider's adventurous test, it was discovered that The temperature at a depth of 15 meters had increased to minus 102 degrees; but when the little spider continued to crawl downward, it suddenly lost its footing and fell into the cold liquid methane. It worked for less than a few seconds before being frozen.
Being able to withstand low temperatures does not mean that it is not afraid of freezing.
"Damn it!" Ding Shiyou exploded, "The walls around here are all covered with dry ice, which is impossible to hold on to. Especially the methane is constantly evaporating, and a large amount of cold gas is rising, which has caused great trouble to the robot. Even if It uses a diamond chip, but it still cannot keep working at such low temperatures. No wonder all the previous detectors have been frozen by low temperatures and dry ice!”
As he said that, the remaining robots fell down one by one and disappeared without bringing back any news.
"Release the fish robot!" Liu Hai said calmly. This is an adventure. It would only be suspicious if everything goes smoothly! Although this idea is a bit unflattering, it is indeed true in exploration. There is no danger, often because all dangers have been concentrated. Soon, three "mechanical fish" were released. Specially treated fish can work well at such low temperatures for two hours. After two hours, I can only say goodbye to this world!