Half-immortal civilization

With the previous experience, this time the five mechanical fish were launched directly at the opening of the hole using the cantilever.

After exploring the bottom for a while, the mechanical fish found the hole made by the rail gun. It was a big hole with a width of one meter!

It has now been a full 100 minutes since the launch of the space-based railgun, and the dry ice and methane have begun to condense again.Fortunately, the ice layer (dry ice) that has condensed in this hole is only a few millimeters thick.The strength of the mechanical fish is not small, otherwise tens of millions of dollars would not be wasted!

With a flick of the tail, the ice layer broke, and five mechanical fish filed in.

On the cantilever, the strong light cannot provide enough illumination; I wanted to try it, but I didn’t expect that the light also has temperature, which caused the boiling of methane, and it was really steaming, completely covering the light; finally I can only give up.

"I hate methane!" Ding Shiyou muttered as he retracted the cantilever.

The thickness of the dry ice layer is a hundred meters, and the density of liquid carbon dioxide is as high as 1.03, which is heavier than water.

"Carbon dioxide is heavier than water, why is it floating on top of the water? Not under the water?" Yang Zhencheng was puzzled.In fact, too many people are also puzzled.

"I think it should be about the freezing point." Liu Haibo tried to explain, "Although liquid carbon dioxide is indeed heavier than water, don't forget that water will freeze at zero degrees, and at this time carbon dioxide is already a gas. It is impossible to condense. Therefore, at this time, carbon dioxide is released floating on the water.

The carbon dioxide does not start to condense until the temperature starts to drop further above. "

"Wow, you are indeed the captain, you know it all!"

"Get out! Little Nail, hurry up and do your work!"

"My name is Ding Shiyou! Not Little Nail!"

"..." The protest went unheeded.

The carbon dioxide layer is really nothing to look at, but it is found that many methane bubbles are constantly floating up, passing through some hair-like pores in the carbon dioxide dry ice layer, and seeping into the methane above.

At the bottom of the liquid carbon dioxide, there is a hole only 30 centimeters in size. It can be seen that the power of the rail gun has dropped a lot here; but fortunately, it finally penetrated the ice layer, and the ice layer here is already one centimeter thickness.

This kind of thickness can't stop these mechanical fish, ice is fragile after all.

The thickness of the ice layer is more than ten meters.

But when the mechanical fish swims out of the cave, it enters a world that surprises Liu Haibo and others!I feel that everything before was worth it!
The water temperature here is above freezing, but, more importantly, this is an endless underground reservoir - at least the detectors on the five mechanical fish can't detect the edge; and the liquid water here actually gave birth to life .Compared with Ceres, it is warmer and larger, and the most complex life is actually a tube worm with a length of several meters.This tubeworm is like a jellyfish, very primitive, with only a thin film body, but without any brain and nervous system, etc., and the digestive system is extremely simple.Such organisms are more like a simple collection of microorganisms, and the cells have not yet undergone high differentiation.

In addition, this place is a cradle of alien life - because there is no sunlight here, many of the life forms are covered in white or black.

Through the dim light, the images of these close-up life can be seen clearly.

In addition, it is not completely dark here, there are still some luminous creatures.But there are no plants here. In this underground space, there are only life forms like corals, between animals and plants. They are more like a collection of fungi, with the ability to use heat and minerals to synthesize organic substances. .In addition, the water here is full of a large number of microorganisms.

This shows that the interior of Mars is not completely cooled. Around 2000, there were probes on Mars that photographed flash floods that suddenly appeared, although they only passed away in a flash.

"sampling."

Sampling is not easy, you have to pass a huge straw, grab, etc. through the small hole through the cantilever; although the hole that has just been frozen has been opened, it is still difficult to control.

First of all, the iron ball is suspended by the thin carbon fiber, and it falls slowly.Once the position deviated from the hole is found, the team members can only adjust the position by slightly swinging the cantilever.And such an adjustment will take a few minutes before the change will be transmitted to the bottom.

It took three hours just to pass the iron ball into the bottom water layer.Originally, this kind of work was difficult even on Earth, but now everyone is wearing bulky space suits. One can imagine the difficulty.

"Put insulated pipes!"

Rolls of hose were lowered.Then in the cold environment, it becomes more fragile than glass.But there is no way, this is already the best pipe that the current expedition team can produce.

Along the carbon fiber line, the hose slides slowly into the ice layer and into the water layer.The water pump started to work, continuously pumping out the groundwater, along with a large number of tiny lives.The strong underground pressure is as high as hundreds of Earth's atmospheric pressure, which makes the extraction work very smooth; even with a slight pressure, the water comes to the ground.

"This thing is like a magnified earthworm!" An unlucky tube worm was pulled up.Of course, there are other lives.All of them were put in a one-meter-square insulated water tank. These lives will be tested in space, and if they are deemed not to cause harm to the earth, they will be brought back to the ground laboratory.

Then, there is a sealed grab bucket, which is very small, only a dozen centimeters, but it is enough to grab certain "plants" and soil at the bottom of the water.In any biosphere, soil is the main source of minerals; analyzing the composition of soil is of great significance; of course, there are often simple but important lives in the soil, which can often provide the basis for the entire life circle, such as Cyanobacteria on Earth.

The entire working time was spent more than 20 hours, and there was no rest at night.During this period, the mechanical fish also transmitted some specific data under the water back to the ground.Of course, more than 20 hours of detection is enough to exhaust the battery, and these mechanical fish also lose the value of recycling.

When the team returned to the base, the detection mission was basically completed in the base.As for the ice caps of the North and South Poles, the space shuttle carries instruments to carry out scanning operations, of course, close-range scanning.This is not difficult for a high-tech space shuttle.

"Everything is packed, we are going home!" Liu Haibo announced the exciting news on the channel.

"Go home!!!" All 120 people cheered.Originally planned for at least three months, the longest space exploration may reach a year, but in fact it is only more than two months.It's not that the expedition members don't work hard, but that the environment in space is harsh, beyond everyone's imagination.Who would have thought that the physiological activities of human beings would be severely affected when the orbit of Mars was exceeded; even now, everyone still has some palpitations.

In addition, the long-term weightlessness has put individual female employees in danger of life. If they were not forced to exercise, they might have loose bones and atrophy of muscles by now.The most frightening thing is that the atrophy of the heart and brain is fatal.

And the lonely, dangerous and strange space environment also makes everyone face the threat of death at all times.That kind of silent pressure almost made everyone collapse.