The reason why Hoffman led a team to search for water in the North Pole so quickly was because he knew that the company was starting to develop real estate on Mars. Once a large number of Blue Star humans migrated to Mars, water would be one of the most important resources.
Although the ecosystem technology developed by Miracle Technology can effectively circulate the water in the living base, some of it will still be lost.
This requires replenishing the water source every once in a while, although this interval is relatively long.
It is for this reason that Du Qiu is cautious about long-range aerospace activities. Of course, aircraft completely controlled by intelligent robots have already flown to various planets in the solar system.
Deep space exploration activities led by artificial intelligence Stardust are proceeding in an orderly manner, and have reached as far as the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system.
With the current average speed of 3,000 kilometers per second for aircraft with magical technology, it only takes 17 days to fly from Blue Star to the edge of the solar system.
The existing exploration aircraft is a simple match of the Pterosaur fighter and is named Kunpeng Scientific Exploration Space Plane.
It has canceled most of its weaponry and replaced it with various scientific instruments. It uses metallic hydrogen as its energy source and has a battery life of about 60 days.
The endurance of the Mammoth-class transport landing ship is far greater than that of these aerospace fighter-type aircraft, and its stored metallic hydrogen energy is enough to support its endurance in years.
In terms of current navigation within the solar system, there is basically no need to worry about energy depletion.
As for breaking out of the solar system and flying across galaxies, Du Qiu has no plans yet until he solves the problem of the limit of human lifespan.
You can't have an expedition fleet that sails and builds people at the same time. By the time it crosses the long void and reaches another galaxy a few or even dozens of light years away, the fleet members have already changed for several generations.
This kind of expedition meant nothing to Du Qiu.
Think about it, at the speed of current aircraft, it would take 400 years to fly to the Proxima Centauri galaxy, the closest galaxy to the solar system, which is also 4 light-years away. How many generations would this take?
Rather than dispatching such a fleet, it is better to carry out research in two aspects: on the one hand, to increase the speed of aircraft, and on the other hand, to increase the life span of human beings.
When the two reach a certain balance point, it will be meaningful to conduct such cross-galactic space exploration.
Du Qiu is full of confidence in the improvement of these two aspects. Based on his understanding of Level 4 civilization, there is still huge room for improvement in aircraft speed.
Judging from the current situation of biological research, it is not impossible to increase the limit of human life span.
In this round of global recruitment, Magic Technology has a focus. One of the focuses is biomedical talents. There is no limit to the number. There is no limit to the number of people who can apply.
The prerequisite is of course that you have to reach a certain level of knowledge, and you can't just apply for a job just like a cat or a dog.
At the North Pole of Mars, after more than an hour of work, Hoffman's team completed the exploration of this open-pit salt mine.
It's really like what Hoffman intuitively felt. This open-pit salt mine is related to frozen water.
The entire salt mine is about 20,000 square meters in size and has a depth of five meters. The reserves of this salt mine are not small.
During the exploration, Hoffman and his colleagues found obvious traces of water impact. They followed the trace all the way north, and after traveling 100 kilometers, they came to a depression.
Here, you can obviously feel that the humidity is much higher than other places.
This means that water vapor has evaporated into the air.
The group of people got busy again excitedly, and soon the engineering robot drilled holes here and collected rock cores nearly 100 meters deep underground.
When the core was taken out, everyone cheered.
A considerable section of the slender core rod is filled with crystal clear frozen water!
This section is thirty meters long, with more than ten meters of frozen soil above it, which means that there is a layer of frozen water up to 30 meters deep underground more than ten meters deep.
It can be said that it is this layer of frozen soil more than ten meters thick that protects the frozen water underground from evaporation.
Of course, it is also because the temperature at the North Pole of Mars is only -120°C, which makes it always frozen.
Hoffman had all these ice cores stored in closed freezers, and then explored the depression everywhere.
Finally, it was discovered that there were layers of frozen water of varying depths under the entire depression, which covered an area of 5 square kilometers.
The deepest layer of frozen water is seventy or eighty meters deep, and the shallowest is ten meters deep.
These field exploration data completely make up for the results of previous NASA remote sensing satellite tests.
There is no doubt that there is water at the north pole of Mars.
Based on the open-pit salt mines he encountered before, Hoffman can basically determine that this area was once a sea, and when unknown reasons caused the Martian sea to evaporate.
The salt in the sea gathers into open-pit salt mines, and even lower underground in this depression, some seawater remains and is permanently frozen.
According to normal speculation, there should be ancient Martian marine life in this frozen water layer. As for whether it is lower organisms or higher organisms, I am afraid that further research is needed.
This is the work of the biochemical research team, but Hoffman is also vigilant. All frozen water samples collected need to be disposed of properly.
If there is some kind of virus component, it will be a biochemical crisis for the closed living base.
Fortunately, the company has long formulated a rigorous alien biochemical disposal process to ensure that humans can safely come into contact with alien environments when exploring planets beyond Blue Star.
Zhao Mingchuan said excitedly: "Teacher, this is really an ancient ocean, but I don't know when this ocean disappeared.
However, with this frozen water layer, we humans can survive on Mars for a long time."
"Don't get too happy too early. These frozen water samples need to be handled through safe procedures to ensure that there are no potential unknown microorganisms or viruses. You must remember this and don't get carried away by temporary discoveries and forget the safety regulations.
It was a quiet and peaceful morning in the fishing village by the sea. The fishermen who got up early had already had breakfast, packed up their fishing boats and sailed out of the harbor.
The sun shines warmly on this beach, and some children rush to the sea after the tide goes out in the morning. From time to time, they laugh happily because they pick up good seafood.
At 7:12, people suddenly felt the earth shaking, which lasted for about 19 seconds.
Badong County on the coast was the epicenter of the earthquake. In these 19 seconds, almost all the houses collapsed!
At almost the same time, in Xingguo, 460 kilometers northeast of Badong County, the whole city felt the force from the center of the earth. The earth shook and weak houses collapsed instantly.
In this shining pearl of Southeast Asia, in these 19 seconds, a dozens-story building in the Central Business District tilted and collapsed, leaning against a nearby building, causing the building to tilt to a considerable extent.
It is likely to collapse in subsequent aftershocks.
Such a violent earthquake has never been encountered in the history of the country.
In the past, even if some magnitude 7 earthquakes occurred on the island of Sumatra, the high-rise buildings in the central business district here in Singapore would shake for a moment and it would be over.
This time, a building was knocked down, which shows that the magnitude of this 19-second earthquake definitely exceeded 7.
On the other side, in Jugang, the capital of Sumatra Province, 530 kilometers southeast of Badong County, the losses were even worse than those in Star Kingdom.
Originally, Sumatra was an island prone to earthquakes, and there were often major earthquakes of magnitude 6 or 7. Most of the buildings in Hong Kong had earthquake-resistant designs.
Therefore, the residents here are not afraid of earthquakes, but are afraid of tsunamis caused by earthquakes. Generally, they will run to higher ground after earthquakes to avoid possible tsunamis.
However, this time, the earthquake was different from the past. First of all, it did not occur in the usual sea, and secondly, its epicenter was only 6 kilometers away from the surface.
Finally, the conduction distance of its seismic waves was far longer than any previous one, and its duration reached 19 seconds, almost second only to the first major earthquake before the Japanese islands sank.