The last human in the universe

Chapter 30 The Fountain
The Falcon [-] spacecraft, which has been in service for decades, once again took on this task.

The Falcon [-] and [-] spacecraft are the only means to connect the human base and the Tinder spacecraft.The damage of any spaceship is an unacceptable loss.During these decades, everyone cherished and maintained them as much as possible.And their quality has withstood the test of time.

Until now, they are a bit older and older, but the big fault is none of them.

After bidding farewell to the children, Zhao Changxing drove the Falcon [-] alone and embarked on a long journey.

This is the first time in decades that Zhao Changxing drives them away from Sedna.

Under Zhao Changxing's control, its speed is not considered fast, with a maximum speed of only 10 kilometers per second.At this speed, Zhao Changxing needs 6 full days to reach the vicinity of the asteroid.

The reason why it is so slow is not because it does not have the ability to accelerate to a higher speed, but because Zhao Changxing must save fuel, otherwise he will not have the ability to return after the exploration is completed.

After all, this is a landing ship, not an interstellar voyage ship.

After the initial acceleration, the spacecraft entered inertial navigation mode.Zhao Changxing waited silently in the small cabin, working with the sky full of stars and endless darkness all day long.Fortunately, during this period of time, he can communicate with the Pyro spacecraft and the human base at any time, and keep abreast of the progress of the projects there, so he has something to do.Otherwise, staying in such a small space for such a long time would be unbearable for even the mentally tough.

Zhao Changxing did not stop people's demolition actions, but everything went according to the original plan.

The long sailing time is finally over.The Falcon 1000 spacecraft began to slow down, and finally hovered at a distance of only more than [-] meters from the asteroid.

The gravity from this asteroid is close to nothing, at least Zhao Changxing can't feel it at all.Only the data on the precision equipment showing how many tenths of a meter the Falcon spacecraft "falls" toward the asteroid every passing hour can let Zhao Changxing know that even such a small planet has gravity.

At this moment, under the sunlight, the asteroid showed a black-gray luster.Its surface is extremely uneven, with a large number of rock piles and very sharp edges and corners.Under the background of the deep universe, it is like a huge monster.

After the spacecraft remained relatively stationary relative to the asteroid, Zhao Changxing immediately manipulated the several equipment he brought and started observing.

Amidst the faint sound of beeps, a straight line is slowly advancing on the screen of the device.All of a sudden, this straight line rises instantly, and never wants to fall again.This made Zhao Changxing's heart skip a beat.

"Alpha decay, helium core... This asteroid really has radiation!"

Alpha decay is the particle released by a radioactive element when it decays, consisting of two neutrons and two protons, carrying no electrons.Its penetrating ability is weak, and only a piece of white paper can block it.

But here is the vacuum of the universe, even at a distance of about 1000 meters, Zhao Changxing can directly observe its existence through equipment.Of course, if the distance is too long, it cannot be observed even in the universe, just like the Tinder spacecraft and Sedna star separated by millions of kilometers.

The observation of alpha decay made Zhao Changxing instantly excited.Because this means that his guess has been initially confirmed.That is, there are a lot of radioactive heavy elements on this asteroid!

And this also means that the extraordinary "high temperature" on its surface - as high as minus 251 degrees Celsius, has been explained.

When radioactive heavy elements undergo radioactive decay, such as alpha radiation, they release decay heat.Then a reasonable speculation can be made at this moment: the decay of a large number of radioactive heavy elements existing on this asteroid has heated it and made it show a higher temperature.

After confirming the presence of alpha radiation, Zhao Changxing slightly manipulated the Falcon spacecraft, making it a little closer to the asteroid again, about a distance of only tens of meters, then directly opened the hatch, put on the spacesuit, and directly It landed on the asteroid.

After his feet really touched the surface of the asteroid and maintained stability, he finally felt a little bit of gravity after feeling it carefully.But the gravity is extremely weak, and he can even clearly feel that as long as he moves a little, he can directly obtain a speed higher than the escape velocity of this asteroid, and stay away from this star since then.

Its escape velocity is only a few centimeters per second, or even lower.

On the dim surface of the asteroid, Zhao Changxing carefully searched for what he wanted to see.

He saw the deep and dark canyon, the towering "mountain", and the rugged "earth", but his eyes never stopped on these things.After a long time, he jumped lightly, gaining the speed to escape the asteroid's gravitational field, and his body rose directly.Subsequently, the propulsion system of the spacesuit was activated, pushing it to start orbiting the asteroid at a height of only a few meters.

His eyes were like scanners, continuing to search for something he wanted to see.

He circled the asteroid like this, round and round, until he searched almost half of the planet's "surface", and he didn't stop until he saw a "hazy", and then Fly over quickly.

At the same time, this discovery also made his heart beat violently again.

It was a "fountain".

The fountain is located in one of the cracks at the tip of the long asteroid.There was nothing at the opening of the crack, but only a few decimeters away from the opening of the crack, he could see with the naked eye some roughly blue or white crystals appearing out of thin air.These crystals floated out of thin air, or slowly floated into space, and disappeared since then, or slowly floated and landed on the surface of this asteroid, and then piled up.

Beside the opening of the crack, Zhao Changxing saw that its surface had already been covered with a layer of this kind of crystal.

Zhao Changxing often saw this kind of crystals on Sedna.

The white one is probably solid carbon dioxide or something else of the same color.The blue one should be solid oxygen.

This fountain clearly shows that there is a high pressure inside the asteroid and there is gaseous gas.The higher pressure caused the gases to be ejected through the gaps, after which they lost heat, condensed into a solid, and either escaped the asteroid or fell to the surface.

In the dark and cold universe, generally speaking, they should have been frozen into a solid, and should not exist in gaseous form.But since there are more radioactive elements in this asteroid, it is understandable that they change from solid to gas under the action of decay heat.

And in this way, the matter that the mass of this asteroid is so much lower than previously estimated, and does not match its density, has also been answered.

It should indeed be hollow.And why didn't it collapse inwards?The reason is also very simple, and the fountain in front of you can answer it.That's because of the higher pressure and temperature inside it.Where do the higher pressures and temperatures come from?From radioactive heavy elements.

So far, Zhao Changxing finally figured out the strange data presented by the asteroid before.

But this raises another question.

The radioactive heavy elements that are enough to heat the asteroid as a whole must have a relatively violent decay rate, which means that its half-life will not be too long.At the same time, even if the interior of this asteroid is entirely composed of solid dry ice, oxygen, methane, nitrogen, etc., its stock is limited.Keep spraying, and it won't take too long before it will be exhausted.

All this means that the state of the asteroid at this moment is only a short part of its entire life course.This length of time may only be thousands of years to tens of thousands of years. Once this period of time is over, it will return to ice-cold and dead silence, and it will no longer be able to eject anything.

"Probably not long ago, another asteroid with a lot of radioactive heavy elements hit it and merged with it. So it gained the ability to heat itself and appeared in front of us not long after."

Zhao Changxing made a guess about this.As for why there are so many radioactive heavy elements in that other star, where do so many radioactive heavy elements come from—whether it comes from the decay of other elements, or due to some special physical changes, it is unknown up.

"Perhaps... this incident has something to do with the strange signals that Xiaoxi received?"

Zhao Changxing's heart moved, and he thought of a possibility again.But now there is too little information, and there is really no way to make further speculations.So he could only put this idea aside.

But anyway, at this stage, it doesn't really matter.The important thing is that Zhao Changxing finally proved his conjecture preliminarily.And this speculation means an amazing possibility that may change the fate of human civilization.

——If the internal pressure of this asteroid is relatively high and there is a large amount of gas, then is there a possibility that human beings can use their own power to open a channel for the gas with relatively high pressure inside to let them vent out? ?

You know, the jetted gas also has reverse thrust.However, through this reverse thrust, can the power to change the orbit of this asteroid be obtained so that it will not hit Sedna again?
It's like a balloon filled with gas, if a hole is suddenly opened, the balloon itself will inevitably fly away under the reaction force of the gas.

Not to mention pushing it away completely, even making it revolve around Star Sedna and become a satellite of Star Sedna is fine, as long as it doesn't collide with it.

This possibility made Zhao Changxing's heart suddenly hot.

(End of this chapter)