Europa, known as Europa in astronomy.
It has nothing to do with the continent of Europa, but is named after a beautiful Phoenician princess in ancient Greek mythology. Although the two have the same spelling, their meanings are completely different.
Facts have also proved that floating in the deep and dark universe, this planet that is suspected of breeding life is indeed as beautiful as an exotic princess.
On the vast glacier, layers of fine ice chips are flying, and icicles erupt from the cracks from time to time, spreading ice flowers like ginkgo trees in the air. The thin atmosphere contains a trace amount of oxygen, although compared to the oxygen content of the Earth's atmosphere, this amount is not worth mentioning at all.
Standing on the white glacier, half of the sky is occupied by the huge Jupiter, which is embedded in the horizon from the sky, giving people the illusion that if they keep walking towards Jupiter, they can reach it.
That huge planet is always hovering there due to plagiarism lockdown. Most of the light comes from reflected sunlight from Jupiter, and the Sun itself appears only as a soft bright spot from here. Therefore, the side facing Jupiter is always bright, with the glaciers illuminated white, while the side facing away from Jupiter is never-ending darkness.
The temperature at the equator is below about minus 160 degrees, and the temperature at the poles is below minus 200 degrees Celsius. The ice layer on the surface of Europa is several kilometers thick, and under the several kilometers thick ice layer, there is a layer of ice thicker than the earth. deep ocean.
But in general, the climate environment here is still much better than that on Jupiter.
Nestled between two glaciers is a completely black colony.
As for why we chose the black color that is incompatible with the background, it is naturally to absorb more light and heat from Jupiter from the limited light illumination.
At this moment, the hatch of the colony slowly opened, and a space vehicle drove out of the garage and headed towards the drilling well not far away.
"This is number Z1214. It has arrived at its destination. The drilling platform is operating well and the battery is being replaced."
"Received... please report the situation at any time."
"learn."
Wearing a heavy space suit, an engineer jumped off the space vehicle, opened the trunk of the space vehicle, took out a battery about the size of a laptop computer, and walked towards the drilling platform.
His name is Tan Ming, from China, and he belongs to the first batch of immigrants in the Earth Defense Alliance's Jupiter cooperative development plan. He only received a month of adaptive training on the moon before setting foot on this land. As for what he was holding in his hand now, it was a nuclear battery containing helium-3 and tritium, and wrapped in a thick lead barrier.
The gravity environment on Europa is slightly better than that on Jupiter, about one-seventh of Earth's gravity and slightly lower than that of the moon. Anyone who has received space walking training in Guanghan City can easily adapt to this level of gravity.
Jumping onto the stand, Tan Ming took out the wrench from behind, unscrewed the bolt fixed to the battery interface, pulled out a data cable and connected it to the wrist-mounted computer on his arm, and entered the unlocking password.
With a soft sound like air leakage, the trap door holding the battery popped open.
He skillfully removed the battery from the drilling platform, then inserted the battery carried in his left hand into the groove, then closed the battery compartment door again and tightened the fixing bolts.
"This is number Z1214. The battery has been replaced and the drilling power supply is normal."
"Check the drill bit."
"Under inspection..." Tan Ming typed a few buttons on the wrist-mounted computer, watched the progress bar read out, then breathed a sigh of relief and continued, "The drill bit is in good condition. Do you want me to open it?"
"Open it."
Jumping skillfully from the support of the drilling platform, the engineer floated steadily to the ground.
Accompanied by a muffled rumble coming from the soles of his feet, the drilling platform behind him began to operate again.
In the outpost not far away, all the scientific researchers, no matter which country they came from, were gathered in the command room of the outpost, quietly looking at the downward red line on the screen. From the moment the drilling platform was erected, they had been waiting for this moment, and a month had passed in the blink of an eye.
According to an analysis by the Institute of Extraterrestrial Biology at the University of Coro, with suitable seafloor temperatures, abundant oxygen resources, and undersea volcanic light, life is likely to exist under Europa’s ice cap. All drills and detectors are sterile to avoid contamination of Europa's ocean by Earth's bacterial colonies or viruses.
The red dot marking the drill bit continued downwards, and the returned shock waves began to change from weak to strong, getting closer and closer to the interface between ice and water.
If nothing else, today is the moment to break the ice!
At this moment, on another holographic screen, the shock wave suddenly trembled violently, the alarm signal light sounded, and the entire command room was like boiling water, and all the staff immediately became busy.
"The ice cracked and a large amount of gas was detected!"
"Stop drilling and detonate the perforating device!"
"receive!"
After receiving the commander's order, the staff sitting in front of the command podium immediately grasped the red handle and pushed it to the bottom.
On Europa, heat is more important than water. The water resources here are extremely abundant, even more than the water on earth. Most of the water on Earth is on the surface, but all the water on Europa is contained in its belly.
NASA has done a horizontal comparison in this area a long time ago, using data modeling to stack the Earth's water resources and Europa's water resources into a sphere, and the final conclusion is the same.
Tidal forces cause Europa itself to be in a state of repeated stretching and contraction. The energy generated by this movement heats the seawater under the ice, and together with submarine volcanic activity, provides heat for the activities of underwater life.
However, it is precisely because of the stretching and shrinking movements caused by this tidal force that Europa's ice caps are prone to compression similar to the movement of Earth's plates, resulting in cracks, bulging glaciers and fractured ice valleys. On Europa, you can often see water columns hundreds of kilometers high shooting out of cracks, and the spectacular sight of instantly solidifying into ice crystals at ultra-low temperatures is for this reason.
Almost at the moment when the handle was pushed down, there was a sudden flash of fire above the drill bit that penetrated several kilometers into the ice sheet. The anchor hook exploded by the electromagnetic ejection plunged hard into the ice sheet squeezing the drill pipe, firmly fixing the drill bit in the ice layer.
At the same time, violent shaking erupted below the drill bit, and cracks began to spread upward from the back of the ice sheet. The ice sheet that was almost covered by the drill bit began to break in large areas from the back. Until the moment when the cracks touched the drill bit, the entire ice sheet was like a punctured balloon. Seawater mixed with high-pressure bubbles crashed into the ice sheet in an instant. drill bit—
"Damn it! The drill pipe broke!"
"Number Z1214, evacuate the area immediately, repeat, evacuate immediately!"
Feeling the tremors coming from the soles of his feet, Tan Ming took a few steps back in horror. When he heard the voice coming from his ears, he immediately climbed in towards the space vehicle without saying a word, started the engine, and shouted loudly. roared.
"Fuck! What did you just do?!"
"We didn't do anything... The situation below may be more complicated than we imagined... Anyway, you should get out of here quickly... "
There was something said at the headquarters behind, but he didn't pay attention to it. After sitting in the driver's seat, he started the space car as fast as possible, almost stepping on the accelerator to the limit. Just as he was desperately racing five to six hundred meters, he only heard a dull loud noise from The chair came from the ground, almost lifting him from his seat.
"Grass!"
Tan Ming's head suddenly rushed forward, and Tan Ming subconsciously looked back and saw that the tens of meters high drilling platform was blasted into the sky by icicles like a volcanic eruption. The upward spiraling water column scattered circles of white ice shards in the air, like a tornado growing from the ground, flying gracefully in the air.
The foot on the accelerator was involuntarily released, and the space car that had driven out of the dangerous area slowly stopped. Hailstones as big as mung beans hit the glass window gently, and his eyes were fixed there.
Tan Ming can swear.
This is definitely the most spectacular scene he has ever seen in his life...
:. :