I Have A Super USB Drive - Chapter 514
A few days later, Mars South Pole.
Two landing vehicles dragged a drill-like device and moved slowly on the snow.
At the back of the landing vehicle, there are five scientists wearing protective suits. These people are chatting with each other in the back of the landing vehicle, and behind them, a hemispherical building has been erected.
The diameter and height of this building even exceed the size of the Ares spacecraft. It is constructed from countless pieces of steel plates. These building modules are almost identical. Even if one piece is broken, it can be quickly replaced and repaired.
More than thousands of steel plate modules together form a hemispherical building, and the top half of the building is even completely replaced by glass, forming a transparent dome.
This building built by XTN engineering robots will be the scientific research station for everyone in the future.
There is a small inertial fusion reactor in the scientific research station, which can provide electricity for more than ten years. The inside is divided into three floors. In the center, there is a large garden from the bottom to the top dome. The plants inside are from The life-tolerant plants brought to the earth, every morning, the light of Mars will shine in from the dome, forming a greenhouse effect, but also can provide sufficient photosynthesis for plants.
It is not so much a scientific research station as it is a small ecological park.
The scientific research station is surrounded by a circular area, where there are scientists’ living rooms, dining rooms, meeting rooms, various laboratories, and warehouses for storing materials. The total indoor area is more than 5,000 square meters. Enough for the scientists here to carry out daily work and life.
At this time, about one kilometer away from the scientific research station, a drilling well has been elevated. This is the weak part of the ice sheet found during geological exploration. At this time, as the drill bit was erected, several XTN engineering Under the control of the robot, it began to drill into the ice sheet under the feet.
The previous five scientists stood aside, silently watching the drill bit go deep into the ice cap.
Ten meters.
Twenty meters.
Fifty meters.
One hundred meters…
As the drill bit continued to go deep into the ground, a few hours later, with a soft sound, a green indicator light suddenly lit up on the control interface of the drilling hole, and everyone was refreshed.
Because this represents the drill bit has successfully penetrated into the previously expected position.
A scientist came up and looked at the screen next to the XTN engineering robot, only to see a light shining downward on the screen, and the illuminated part was sparkling.
“Found it, it’s an underground lake!”
The scientist yelled excitedly, then he turned on the communication device and said loudly toward the communication device, “This is the drilling crew, report to the headquarters, we have found the underground lake, repeat, We have found the underground lake!”
When everyone was celebrating by the well, Hannibal was wearing protective clothing in a laboratory of the scientific research station. He took out pieces of ice and snow samples and kept under the microscope. Watching.
A little bit of time passed, but apart from some crystals and iron filings from beginning to end, he did not find any traces of microorganisms.
“Is there really no living things on Mars?”
Hannibal raised his head, frowning and muttering, but at this moment, the door of the laboratory suddenly opened with a beep.
A man who was also wearing a lab coat walked in happily. He brought in a test tube rack with three test tubes inserted into it, and the test tubes were filled with transparent liquid. I don’t know what it was.
At this moment, the man rushed in and immediately said excitedly, “Hannibal, come and see this!”
“What is this?”
Hannibal asked in confusion.
“This is the underground lake water that the drilling group has just extracted from under a hundred meters of ice.” The
other party replied, while placing the test tube rack on a shelf aside.
“Have you drilled into the underground lake?”
Hannibal raised his brows,
“Don’t you know.” The
other party laughed, “Yes, you stay in the laboratory all day and don’t go out to enjoy the scenery of Mars. No wonder you didn’t know, just half an hour ago. , The drilling crew just hit it. They found that there are a lot of underground spaces under the ice sheet. These spaces are full of carbon dioxide, and below is an underground lake with a temperature of about zero degrees. Do you know what this means?”
“The groundwater, the temperature around zero degrees… This means that there is likely to be life in the underground lake…”
Hannibal suddenly woke up, he looked at the three test tubes, and walked forward without saying anything. Take the test tube into the biological cabinet, and then start to extract the liquid in the test tube and drop it into a petri dish through gloves.
Then, he quickly put the petri dish under the microscope and looked down.
“How is it, have you found it?”
Seeing Hannibal’s movements like clouds and flowing water, the voice of the man on the side trembled a bit. If new life is found in the lake, it is equivalent to a milestone in human history, no matter it is him. It is Hannibal, or everyone on the scientific expedition team, they will all be recorded in human history…
And at this time Hannibal didn’t have the time to care about each other, he just stared into the microscope. With that drop of liquid, in his sight, he seemed to have entered a vast unknown world…
“Hannibal?”
The man next to him called out again.
It was only then that Hannibal raised his head. He nodded and solemnly said, “Call the captain and inform everyone by the way. We have a major discovery…”
Half an hour later.
Sixteen scientists gathered, and all have arrived in the conference room of the scientific research station.
The reason why we did not return to Ares is because all the scientific instruments and living facilities on the Ares were almost evacuated, and all the materials were transferred to the scientific research station. In the near future, Ares The spacecraft will return to Earth with a large amount of soil, water, air, minerals and other materials that are only found on Mars.
“I believe you already understand why we are calling everyone to focus this time.”
Without any delay, the Captain of Ares, Zhou Xiong, stood up and said, then looked at Hannibal, “Hannibal, take your I found out to tell you that I think everyone can’t wait.”
“Okay.”
Hannibal nodded, then walked to the podium, and suddenly, a large screen automatically appeared behind Hannibal, showing on it. A pattern full of small black dots came out.
“This is the microorganisms in the water found after drilling the underground lake before drilling.”
Hannibal said softly, “Now it is the picture seen under a ten times microscope. Most of the black spots are some impurities, including minerals and soil. , Ice particles, etc., but after magnifying thirty times like this, new discoveries will be made…” As he
said, the picture behind Hannibal continued to be magnified, and a gray spot appeared. What is on the screen is not a still picture, but a recorded video.
At this time, inside the gray spot, there were a few weird-looking worms with six or seven short legs swimming freely in the water.
These little worms are transparent and can only see a single outline under the microscope, but they are still clearly distinguishable. They have two long tentacles, even more than the body itself. At the same time, there is an obvious truncated body in the abdomen. Obviously a very common worm creature.
“Chaetognathus.”
Hannibal said, “Well, is this tiny worm very similar to chaetognathus? Except for the lack of eyes and longer tentacles, it is almost the same as the chaetognathus in the ocean. The sea worms are exactly the same, about 0.1-0.2 mm in size…”
As he said, Hannibal turned around and swiped with one hand, the video on the screen automatically moved down, and a new scene appeared. I saw that the previous worm creature was eating a creature smaller than its size, as if Pear-shaped bugs like lice.
“Moreover, through my observations, I found that they are extremely fierce carnivores,”
Hannibal said cautiously. “And what it eats is another marine worm. This worm is about 0.04 mm in size. His staining is negative and belongs to a kind of algae.”
“In addition, we also found three algae organisms. These algae organisms are large single-celled prokaryotes and do not contain chlorophyll and chloroplasts. They should be anaerobic organisms. They don’t need photosynthesis. What they need is water temperature. They rely on the temperature of the water to produce chemical reactions for their lives.”
With several strange appearances but inexplicably normal microorganisms in the microbial world, Hannibal’s The expression became more solemn, “Next, I found a special thing…” As he
said, the camera of the video behind him once again pointed to one of the round transparent bubbles, which was obviously larger than The previous worm was several times bigger. Not only that, there was a red object in the bubble, and as time passed, the red object was still beating slowly.
It’s like a heart.
“This is…”
Everyone whispered.
“Yes, everyone is right. This is a biological egg.”
Hannibal showed emotion . “The closest thing on earth is the egg of fish. Some small fish can indeed lay less than one. Millimeter eggs, but this also shows one thing, that is, in the underground lake that everyone sees, there are still life similar to earth fishes, but I have not seen the original owner of this kind of eggs, so I dare not Determine whether it is a vertebrate.”
Following Hannibal’s words, everyone was even more shocked. One of the men immediately asked, “So, doesn’t it mean we can fish in the underground lake?”
Everyone laughed at the words.
“I don’t know if it is possible to fish, but I found that some algae in the water need methane and sulfide.”
Hannibal added, “This is similar to the deep-sea archaeal community of the earth. You must know that there is no sunlight and Oxygen, so the early earth’s archaea co-existed with submarine worms. Archaea relied on the continuous sulfide of submarine chimneys to provide energy to supply worms. The worms secreted a hard shell to protect the archaea. This deformation became the foundation of the submarine chimney biological chain. Obviously, these creatures are like this.” The
submarine chimney, also known as the submarine hot spring, refers to the fountain effect in the depths of the ocean floor.
It’s called this name because the hot water spouting from the seabed fountain looks like a smoking chimney from a distance, and these “smoke” also contain sulfide and methane. Once in 1979, A doctor named Bischoff saw this strange sight for the first time on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean at 2,500 meters.
Generally speaking, this kind of chimney near the seabed should be extremely poisonous, and no creature can survive, but the miracle of life is amazing. Those diving scientists discovered that there are all kinds of things around the chimney that should have been barren. There are species of organisms. These organisms live by the heat, methane and sulfide emitted from hot springs. Just like fish need oxygen and algae need sunlight, they also have their own unique survival system.
At this time, hearing Hannibal’s explanation, everyone suddenly realized that, indeed, if life exists on Mars, it will indeed be such a situation. Since the ice cover blocks the sun and there is no oxygen, so here is Life has evolved a new form of survival based on local materials.
But whether they live on oxygen or methane, these organisms still belong to the category of carbon-based.
“Everyone, next, we will have one more task.”
At this moment, Zhou Xiong stood up again and said, “The discovery of living things on Mars is a great discovery of the century, because the existence of these living things confirms for the first time that humans are not the only ones in the universe. Then, next, Everyone in the biology group may need to get more busy. I hope to get all the data about this group of creatures, including their past and their possible future.”
“Don’t worry, Captain Zhou Xiong.”
One of them is the same. The scientist engaged in biology suddenly laughed and said, “Although the existence of life on Mars is shocking, I have to pour cold water, because these life is quite primitive, we are not even sure whether there are mammals, but according to the current environment From a point of view, the living environment of this underground lake is not optimistic. According to previous geological scans, its diameter is only about 20 kilometers. Although it is very large, it is the size for enough mammals to evolve. It’s not enough…”
“Simply put, the environment here is too harsh, which fundamentally makes it impossible to produce intelligent enough life, such as dolphins and whales.”
Another scientist echoed, “This kind of Even if there are intelligent species in the environment, they can only achieve the level of tribal grouping like killer whales. Civilization can only be passed on from generation to generation by an old grandmother, and it is not a climate at all.”
“Perhaps.”
Zhou Xiong heard the words. He glanced at Hannibal, only to see that Hannibal also agreed with this point of view, and he smiled, “Although it is said, these extraterrestrial life is indeed very valuable for research, and people on earth are also Expecting our news eagerly, we must screen out a batch of biological samples and all the statistical data before Ares returns to Earth, and bring it back to Earth.”
“This is naturally no problem.”
Everyone nodded. Promise it down.