Chapter 1,095 An Unexpected Discovery
【June 27, 2019】
After writing the beginning of this line in his diary, Wang Qiang sniffed and looked out the car window at the sky blocked by a sandstorm.
A day on Mars is only 37 minutes longer than on Earth. If we follow Earth's 24-hour clock, it should still be around three in the afternoon, but it is already dusk here.
After the initial excitement period, he now lost the excitement he felt when he first landed on Mars.
Life on Mars is very boring, communication resources are precious, and of course it is impossible to use the Internet. Before the construction of large-scale communication base stations, each person only had 10 minutes of phone time per day to call their relatives and friends on the earth. This was also the only channel for them to obtain information on the earth.
Without the Internet, it would be a torture for modern people.
This means that you can’t look at your phone to swipe your scarf, and you can’t wear a phantom helmet to go to the virtual world. Half of modern people’s entertainment methods have to be marked with a big red cross.
For Wang Qiang, his daily entertainment now is listening to pop music from Earth, lying in bed and reading novels brought from Earth. The pace of life seems to have slowed down all of a sudden. Most other people are the same and find something they like to do after work.
Fortunately, among the twenty colonists in the colony, there is one chef who is good at the four major cuisines. The supplies in the colony cabin are quite abundant, and they can eat different flavors every day. Ever since, eating has become one of their few entertainments.
In order to boost the morale of the colonists, the captain promised them that he would apply to the command center at the end of this month to bring more chefs to the next batch of colonists. On the one hand, we have to take care of the diet of several foreigners, and on the other hand, we can change their tastes.
The sandstorm outside the window was getting bigger and bigger, but Wang Qiang continued to write something in his diary with a pen as if he didn't see it. This was a habit he only developed after arriving on Mars, mainly to pass the time.
As for why he was so calm, it was because he knew very well that as long as it was not a Category 13 typhoon, it would not be able to blow away his anchored Mars rover. As for the sandstorms on Mars, the largest one ever recorded seems to have been level 12.
Before he was sent to Mars, he was a geologist working for Mining Mining in the future, and he still is, of course. The command center gave him only one task, which was to explore the geological information of Mars, search for minerals, and evaluate groundwater reserves.
Although steel can be made by just shoveling a shovel of sand, the minerals needed for heavy industry are not just steel, but also elements such as aluminum, manganese, chromium, cobalt, and nickel, but they are all covered tightly by sand. .
The colony ship parked in synchronous orbit has scanned the geological information map of this area. Based on the landform features on the terrain map, he has identified several locations where mineral deposits and groundwater enrichment areas may exist. His job for the next month is to drive the Mars rover to inspect these mineral sites one by one and complete the final geological information mapping work.
Although he had no illusions that this was an easy job from the beginning, the difficulty of the conditions still surprised him.
The entire Mars is a desert with no shelter at all. This was already the fifth time he encountered a sandstorm today. If it weren't for the colony ship above his head that was monitoring weather data around the clock, he wouldn't have dared to get out of the car casually.
The climate of Mars is unpredictable, and dust storms come and go quickly.
When the wind index returned to a safe value, the dim sky finally reappeared in his sight.
Because the atmosphere is thin, dust particles are more numerous and larger. Due to the Mill scattering effect, dust scatters red light with the same wavelength as its own particle size. The sky in the non-solar line of sight appears reddish, while the light from the sun and its surroundings appears blue.
Such magnificent scenery can only be seen on Mars.
However, you will get tired of looking at it every day. No matter how beautiful the scenery is, it will become an ordinary scenery if you see it too much. Wang Qiang began to miss Koro Island a little, that small island with pleasant scenery, the sea breeze mixed with the smell of seafood, and the blue sea and blue sky.
Shaking his head, Wang Qiang put away the diary and at the same time put away his memories of the earth.
Opening the car door, he already put on his spacesuit and jumped onto the sand with the equipment box in hand. In order to prevent a sudden attack by a sandstorm, before getting off the vehicle, he had opened the anchoring device of the rover chassis and connected a safety rope behind himself.
This was no joke. Although he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he had heard before coming here that the sandstorms here could reach the level of a Category 12 typhoon on earth. It would not be easy to blow away his little arms and legs.
"Is it the sedimentary phase of the lake bed? It's almost weathered. There should be water underneath, but I don't know how much..."
After putting away the holographic image and holding a device that was about the same size as a suitcase, Wang Qiang found a relatively flat spot on the ground and fixed the device on it.
The technological content of the whole set of equipment is not high, but it is quite practical. There is a firing pin at the bottom of the equipment, which can simulate seismic waves by hitting the ground surface at high speed. According to the different propagation speeds of waves in different media, it can determine the lithology of strata at different depths and determine whether there is groundwater below the area and, if so, how deep it is. etc. .
Taking off the tablet from the chest of the spacesuit, Wang Qiang connected the data cable to the device, and then exported the waveform chart.
"The import is complete, let me take a look..."
Looking down the waveform chart, Wang Qiang had already gotten a rough idea of the geological conditions here. However, when he saw the location about two kilometers underground, he suddenly froze and frowned slightly.
"...Was the test wrong?"
Two thousand meters underground, the three red, blue and green wavy curves were greatly distorted and even intertwined. In more than ten years of work experience, this is the first time he has seen this situation.
After backing up the waveform chart, Wang Qiang restarted the device. After waiting for three minutes, he measured another set of data.
However, the result this time was the same.
In addition to their reputation as durable, Future Heavy Industry's equipment is unlikely to break down after just a few days of use. However, after excluding the possibility of equipment failure, there is only one remaining situation, and that is that the geological information of the target area is extremely complex.
In the formation section of more than 100 meters, iron, aluminum, titanium... and other things that I don't even know what they are appeared at the same time.
If you think about it with your feet, you can tell that this is definitely not a natural formation.
But if it’s not naturally formed, what is it?
A thought suddenly appeared in Wang Qiang's mind, causing his heart to beat faster.
"...Hey, does this count as finding a treasure?"
Taking a deep breath, Wang Qiang suppressed the excitement in his heart and did not bother to measure the third set of data. Stuffing the tablet back to his chest, he reached out and pressed the button on the helmet of the spacesuit, connecting to the command center of the colony module through the radio on the rover.
"This is Prospector 01, call the command center. Something happened here...not a security situation. I found something interesting here." (To be continued.) Activate a new website