Zhou Xin showed a surprised expression, "You mean to say that the interior of this planet is completely a whole piece?" No mantle and core? ”

"Theoretically, so. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 info" the Voyager replied solemnly, "The reliability of this conclusion is about 60%, and this ship needs to verify this conclusion." ”

"Then go ahead and do it."

At this time, the probe that had dug a pit on the surface of the planet finally succeeded in digging away the layer of floating dust, revealing the hard surface of the planet, and Zhou Xin and the others turned their attention back to the picture of the probe.

However, Zhou Xin and the others saw that the bottom of the pit dug by the probe was not the flat ground that was expected before, but was covered with rubble. These gravels of various sizes cover the bottom of the pit, and the gravel is about five to ten centimeters in size. After staring at it for a few moments, Zhou Xin found that the gravel at the bottom of the pit was a little strange, and motioned to the detector to pick up one of the gravel and put it in front of the camera, and then everyone found that the gravel in front of the camera was actually translucent, and Zhou Xin was a little surprised to see the shape of this stone, so he motioned to the detector to pick up other gravel to observe. Next, the probe picked up a few more stones from the bottom of the pit, and Zhou Xin and the others found that all of these rubbles were translucent without exception, and one of them was even almost transparent, but from the morphological point of view.

"What are these stones? It doesn't look like glass. Zhou Xin looked at the almost transparent "stone" in front of the camera and muttered to himself.

The probe also looked at the stone for a while, and then replied, "Based on the morphology and physical properties of this fragment, it should be composed of high-purity quartz." ”

"Quartz?" Zhou Xin asked, "Isn't that still silica?" ”

After a while, the detector replied, after examining the stone in detail, "After a detailed analysis of the surface, the composition of this fragment is high-purity silica. ”

"......" Zhou Xin looked at the gravel on the ground, "Then all these gravel are silica?" ”

"Theoretically, it's all of it."

Looking at the gravel on the ground, Zhou Xin opened his mouth and asked the detector, "What is under the rubble, can you continue to dig it?" ”

The detector did not answer directly, but inspected the gravel ground for a long time, and then replied, "This machine cannot detect the specific thickness of the gravel layer, and it is difficult to dig deeper." ”

Hearing the probe's report, Zhou Xin gave up the idea of letting it continue digging, and motioned for it to move on to explore other places. Zhou Xin turned to the Voyager and asked, "Has the in-depth investigation of this planet been completed?" Are you sure the planet is a monolith, with no hierarchy? ”

"The survey has not yet begun, and the large equipment used for the detection is placed inside the engineering ship that has just been launched, and the engineering ship still has more than an hour to land on that planet." The Voyager replied, and then it reported a new message, "Based on the geological analysis of the location of the landing point by the probes that have fallen on the planet, it is estimated that the silica composition on the surface of the planet occupies more than 80% of the planet's surface, and the depth of the silica layer is unknown. ”

At this time, Spred, who had been listening from the sidelines, asked, "What is the composition of the remaining 20% of the planet's surface?" ”

"The rest of the area is where the probe has not arrived, so the ship does not know the specific composition of this part of the surface."

"So it's possible that the surface of this planet is all silica?" Zhou Xin asked with a surprised tone.

"There's a big possibility." Voyager replied.

"Brother Captain, it's really all this thing on the surface." Atlas's voice came after the Voyager, "Little sister is really stupid, I just read all the pictures sent back by the probes in orbit on the planet, and every place on the surface of this planet is covered with the same thing, you can't be wrong." ”

"Voyager? It's true? Although he didn't believe Atlas's words, Zhou Xin confirmed to the Voyager.

"Really." Atlas's startled voice immediately came out, "Every place is covered in a thick layer of dust, this planet is really weird." ”

After Atlas finished speaking, the Voyager still did not answer, and it took a long time before it began to answer Zhou Xin's question: "This machine has just checked all the image data sent back by the orbiting probe, and found that the situation on the surface of the planet is indeed the same as the conclusion reached by artificial intelligence. ”

"Hmph, people are amazing." Atlas smug and didn't even care what the Voyager called her, "Little sister, you're so stupid, this kind of thing should have been discovered a long time ago." ”

"Okay, Atlas is the best." Zhou Xin said casually, and then said to himself, "The surface is all silica layers, and even other impurities are very few, how is this formed?" ”

"It must have been weathered." Before the two could answer, Atlas rushed to speak.

"That's not what I meant." Zhou Xin realized that Atlas had misunderstood his problem, and he added, "I mean, can such a thick layer of dust be formed by weathering alone?" And, where are all the ingredients on the planet except silica? You must know that the ancient wandering planet we encountered last time, although the surface of the planet is also covered with such a layer of dust, the composition of the dust on it is much more complex than that on this planet, how can it be so pure. ”

"Maybe the other ingredients have sunk to the depths of the planet?" Spred replied in a puzzled tone, "As for such a thick layer of dust, I don't know, maybe it has something to do with the special composition of the planet's surface?" He guessed.

"I don't know where the other ingredients have gone, and we can't guess until the probe sends back other information." Atlas's tone became serious, "But the rate of weathering can be estimated based on the composition and environment of this planet's surface. After a few seconds, Atlas came to a conclusion, "The surface of this planet can reach a temperature of more than 100 degrees Celsius on the sunny side, and below minus 100 degrees Celsius on the shady side. ”

A minute later, Voyager came to a similar conclusion, but added that "the wandering planet we encountered before had a slow weathering rate because the planet was far away from the star, the surface temperature difference did not change much, and the dust layer formed by the weathering at the beginning prevented the loss of crystalline water from the solid rock layer underneath, which is why only such a thin layer of weathering formed for so long." ”

After listening to the two similar analysis conclusions, Zhou Xin focused on the speed at which they processed the information, you must know that the Atlas body is now in the main engine of the Voyager, and the two can be said to use the same set of equipment. But under the same equipment, Atlas can come to a conclusion in just a few seconds, but the Voyager needs close to a minute to come to it, this gap is already very large, Zhou Xin silently decided in his heart that when he has time another day, he will learn this technology from the Atlanteans, it doesn't matter if he can't create artificial intelligence, it is also very good to increase the speed of the Voyager to process information.

Just as Zhou Xin was thinking about this, the Voyager's report brought him back to his senses, "Your Excellency, the engineering ship has successfully landed on the surface of this planet, and now it is deploying various equipment. ”

"Don't be in a hurry with the acquisition equipment, put the detection equipment down first, we have to figure out the situation on this planet first." Zhou Xin commanded.

"Understood." Voyager replied, "The probe is being deployed, and it is expected to take fifteen minutes to fully deploy the device." ”

So Zhou Xin waited quietly for ten minutes, during which he stopped by to browse through several reports sent back from other detectors. As Voyager said before, all of these reports begin with a description of the dust composition of the landing location, and the top of the composition list is silica, which accounts for more than 98% of the total, and the highest composition of the other components is only 0.5%. The composition report is followed by a nearby topographical report, but the terrain report is basically the same, except for one report that describes a large crater, and the rest of the report is a cookie-cutter plain terrain. Looking at these reports, which could be said to be identical, Zhou Xin imagined the scene on the surface of the planet—a smooth ball of stone covered in dust.

While Zhou Xin was thinking about this report, the large-scale detection equipment on the surface of the planet had been set up, so Zhou Xin came back to his senses and focused his attention on the screen.

In the screen, a device about ten meters long is perched high on the dusty ground, and this device is now in operation, although Zhou Xin cannot hear the sound it makes while it is running. However, the slight vibration of the machine does not hide the fact that it is running.

The device operated for about ten minutes with slight shaking, and then Voyager reported the results of the detection device, "The seismic waves emitted by the detection device did not show a change in velocity in the interior of the planet, so it can be inferred that there is no layered structure in the interior of the planet, and the accuracy of this estimate is more than 95%." ”

"Brother Captain, the main ingredients inside this planet seem to be similar." Atlas seems to have read more detail from the report sent back, "The planet seems to be a whole piece of quartz. ”

Although he was already surprised by the situation on this planet before, after the Voyager and Atlas finished reporting, Zhou Xin was surprised by the situation on this planet again.

"Is it really a whole piece?" Zhou Xin asked in surprise, "Or is it a whole piece of quartz?" ”

"The probe is confirming the possibility of the latter speculation." Voyager replied, "However, based on all the reports sent back by the previous probe, there is a high probability that the interior of this planet is what it is now." ”

"And what about the core of the planet? Where did it go. Zhou Xin asked.

"This planet doesn't have a core of any different material in the first place." Atlas said, "If the core is gone, even if the planet collapses, some abnormal holes will form inside, but right now, the interior of this planet is still very uniform, and I don't see any drastic changes." ”

"The planet doesn't even have a plate structure, and its internal structure hasn't changed significantly." Voyager added, "The planet had been stable until now, and even external influences from the planet, including meteorite attacks, were rare. ”

"How can there be such a strange planet?" Zhou Xin looked puzzled, "The structure is uniform, there is no core, and what is even stranger is that the components that make up the planet are almost the same substance, as if they have been specially screened, how did this kind of planet come to be?" Suddenly, a whimsical thought popped into his mind, "Do you think this planet was built by another civilization?" He said in surprise, but before Spred and Dart could answer, he laughed self-deprecatingly, "It's that I'm thinking too much, how is this possible, what is the use of those civilizations making this kind of planet, and the probes have not found traces of civilization activities on this planet." After a pause, he sighed, "It seems that this planet should still be naturally formed, and the universe is so big that it is really amazing." ”

"This planet was made, that's impossible." Atlas said, "None of those grandfathers had the whimsy to make a planet, and where else could they collect so many pure materials?" But there are still anomalies on this planet-" After whetting everyone's appetite, Atlas continued, "It stands to reason that even the first generation of planets can find at least the existence of iron on the planet, but the probes on this planet have not found the existence of iron at all, not even trace of it. However, I found the presence of iron in the spectrum of this star, which means that this star is already a second-generation star, and it stands to reason that the composition of the planets orbiting this star should be similar to it, but the results of the current investigation are not like this, which is indeed very strange. She said in a puzzled tone.

"Indeed." After listening to Atlas's explanation, everyone fell into deep thought, and after a while, Zhou Xin said to himself, "Where have all the other elements of this planet gone?" As he spoke, he looked at the two men beside him.

Spred and Dart shook their heads at the same time, obviously confused about the current appearance of the planet, and then, Spred spoke in a slightly worried tone: "Although we don't know how this planet was formed, our priority is not to study the cause of the formation of the planet. It's about thinking about where we should go next to gather resources......"