Die on Mars

"Old Cat, Ophiopogon japonicus... If you were asked to list the ten scientists who have had the most profound impact on human history, which ten would you choose?" Tang Yue sat in front of the table, holding the manuscript paper under his hand and turning the pen in his hand. .

Ever since it began to record human history, Kunlun Station, originally a scientific research station studying natural sciences, has almost turned into a social science research institute.

"Isaac Newton." The old cat was typing on the keyboard quickly, without raising his head, muttering in his mouth, "... Galois is undoubtedly a young genius, enough to be called a nineteen-year-old genius. One of the greatest mathematicians of the century, it is a pity that he died young... This warns us not to compete with others in a field that we are not good at at all. If Galois chose to solve equations in a competition when he dueled with that officer Instead of drawing a gun and shooting, we can predict that Galois will not only be able to embrace the beauty, but also die in peace..."

"Albert Einstein!" Maidong replied.

"Galileo Galileo," the old cat continued.

"Nicolas Cage, no, Copernicus!" Maidong said again.

"Charles Darwin."

"Does Tesla not count?" Tang Yue asked, "Nikola Tesla."

"When you mentioned Tesla, I thought you were referring to Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla Motors Group." The old cat shook his beard, "Nikola Tesla may be a unique genius. But he’s not one of the ten greatest scientists in human history, and you could put Michael Faraday, James Maxwell and a whole bunch of people ahead of him.”

"Some people say he is a god."

"There is no god in academia," said the old cat, "only psychosis."

"And Max Planck!" Maidong thought of another famous person.

"Ms. Maidong, this kind of ranking is actually meaningless. I don't understand why you like rankings so much. You have to list the 'Top Ten', 'Big Four' and 'Big Three'. You like to divide everything into circles. Outside the inner circle, a whole entity is cut apart from outsiders’ eyes. You have to know that separation is the beginning of discrimination.”

The old cat shook his head.

“Of course Max Planck is great, but equally great are Niels Bohr, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, and Louis de Broglie. If you randomly point out one person in the photo taken at the Fifth Solvay Conference in 1927, he is the greatest physicist of the twentieth century and even in human history."

Tang Yue scratched his head, liking rankings has become his mindset. Not only him, but also Maidong and even most people have this similar mindset.

"We have been ranking since we were young, from small to large." Tang Yue said, "Old cat, you have never experienced the college entrance examination. We are all selected from hundreds of thousands of candidates across the province. Not only the student rankings, but also the school It is also ranked, the first tier in Northern Qing Dynasty, followed by the five East China schools, the C9 alliance, before there were 985 and 211, and later there were some double first-class schools. There are also large and small circles in various fields, such as the eight new and old schools in architecture, Two emails and one email, five colleges and four departments.”

"What about you?" The old cat glanced at him.

"My undergraduate university was very average. It used to be a 211 program, but later it was a double first-class program." Tang Yue replied, "I also studied at an undergraduate university for my master's degree, so I got a diploma."

"Education is really the field with the most serious involution." Lao Mao sighed, "The college entrance examination competition is very fierce, right? Thousands of troops cross the single-plank bridge, you and I live and die, and the swords and swords are bloody."

"But this is also a Chinese characteristic." Maidong smiled.

The old cat stopped talking and continued to record the history of mathematics.

It has just finished writing about the life of Avariste Galois, and next it will record Niels Abel, who is also the founder of group theory.

There is a long list of brilliant names behind Abel.

Henri Poincaré, without whom there would be no theory of relativity.

Georg Cantor, yes, the Cantor of the Cantor Collection.

Bernhard Riemann, the Riemann Hypothesis has not been solved even if the earth disappears.

David Hilbert, the uncrowned king of mathematics.

Hermann Minkowski, Einstein's teacher.

The old cat does not necessarily record these people in chronological order. It writes whoever it thinks of first. Therefore, many more famous mathematicians have been recorded and archived, such as Archimedes, Gauss, Euler, and Lagrange. The names of people such as Sun, Gödel, Neumann, and Hardy have long been lying on the hard drive of Kunlun Station, interspersing with other bright stars in human history.

Tang Yue turned on his computer and connected to the survey telescope on the space station.

He continued to observe the comet.

The Kunlun Station and the Space Station continue to track the comet Laomao-1 and collect enough initial data, so that the computer can predict its orbit. The easiest part of this task is calculation, and the most difficult part is data collection. In the past, observations In an era when means were not developed enough, people would have to spend decades observing the orbit of a comet, or even look for records from ancient books hundreds of years ago.

The Dawn Module of the United Space Station was damaged, and the old cat Tang Yue lost most of his remote observation methods, so he could only extend the time.

The survey telescope takes pictures every half hour. The change in brightness of comet Laomao-Tang-Mai 1 cannot be seen in a short period of time, but Tang Yue can detect the movement of the comet by juxtaposing multiple photos together - this It had already taken shape by that time, and the shimmering head and tail of the comet could be identified in the telescope photos. According to computer calculations, the comet was crossing the orbit of Jupiter and rushing toward the orbit of Mars at an extremely high speed.

As Comet Laomao 1 continues to approach the sun, the gravitational pull it will experience will become stronger and stronger, and its speed will become faster and faster.

Tang Yue stared at the photo on the monitor, imagining that the celestial body was flying through the void at high speed, evaporating water vapor and carbon dioxide spurting out, not like a tail but like the tail flame ejected by a rocket engine. Behind it was a huge The red spot on Jupiter's surface was slowly rotating, and fierce lightning and storms were stirred up in the turbid atmosphere, like a giant one-eye.

"Tang Yue, where is Grothendieck...Tang Yue?"

Tang Yue was startled and woke up from his imagination.

"What?"

"Alexander Grothendieck's information." said the old cat, "where did you put it?"

"It's still in this hard drive." Tang Yue took out the hard drive from the drawer, put it on the table and pushed it to Lao Mao.

"Don't be dazed. What are you looking at? That comet?" The old cat glanced at him and then at the monitor.

Tang Yue nodded, "You said this thing won't hit Mars, right?"

"Of course." The old cat looked a little weird, "The probability of it hitting Mars is basically zero..."

"Ding!" There was a sound.

A pop-up window suddenly popped up on the monitor, indicating that the calculation task was completed.

The old cat Tang Yue turned his head.

The workstation stated that it had completed the calculation of the orbit of comet Laomao-Don-Mai 1, and it put the results on the monitor.

Finished so quickly? The old cat was a little surprised. He thought it would take two more days.

One person and one cat saw a blue arc against a dark background, which was the expected orbit of the comet.

It originates from a white dot, which is obviously a comet.

It ends in a red circle with MARS marked on the side.

There is also a small box.

Inside the box is the English text in bold red: WARNING:IMPACT!

The old cat was stunned, and its face slowly twisted like a slow-motion camera. It looked like an old general on a stage full of flags.