NASA's Jupiter Watch Center has found anomalies in the parameters of the Jupiter probe's energetic particle sensor.

It happened at 10:16 p.m., and the whole process lasted 30 minutes and 54 seconds, and the computer on duty recorded the whole process. From the waveform diagram replayed by the computer, it can be intuitively seen that the peaks of gamma-ray radiation and charged particles are clearly beyond the normal boundary line, especially at the beginning and end positions, and their values even reach the level of Jupiter's storm cyclone. But after 30 minutes and 55 seconds, everything was calm again. This restoration is abrupt, completely different from the gradual state of nature, as if someone was holding a long stick and stirring around the main body of the parent planet for half an hour, and then suddenly stopped.

The Purple Mountain Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered asteroid movements.

The observatory is located on the beautiful Purple Mountain in Xuanwu District, Nanjing, and its observation base is on the top of Happy Horse Mountain in Tieshan Temple Park. The top of the mountain here is flat, the field of vision is wide, there is no smoke pollution, and there is a good amount of night sky light conditions, which is very suitable for observing more, smaller and darker asteroids.

The high-power radio telescope is the treasure of the observatory, and in order to improve the efficiency of the use of the machine, various departments are arranged to use this equipment at different times. The latest observer of the asteroid was a new researcher, and he was lucky enough to win the six/combination lottery on his first job: at 3 a.m., an asteroid in the near-Earth orbit of the Apollo asteroid group between Earth and Mars was moving. The observer did not know the name of this small stone at the time, but later checked the asteroid number and found out that it was 2024GY48, with a diameter of 300 meters.

The observer immediately reported the phenomenon, and the observatory immediately stopped all other observation items and tracked the radio telescope to observe 2024GY48. After another night of hard work, it was almost certain that the trajectory of the 300-meter-diameter boulder would intersect with the Earth's orbit.

A small mountain village in the mountains of southwest China.

The weather was sunny. Today, the ant city is much quieter, and there are not as many guard ants at the entrance of the cave as yesterday, probably because the snail meat is too much to eat, and I don't want to move much.

The professor and his two students returned to the mother city-state of 1231007 Soldier Ant, and the three brought with them a miniature set of brain imaging equipment, including a laptop, a ray receiver, and a converter. A Ph.D. student at the University of Texas explained as he operated.

The postdoc took out a strange gadget with a big speaker: "These gadgets I cobbled together from the scrapped list machines in the school laboratory, they look ugly, but the performance is first-class." He put the horn mask on the nest: "This is equivalent to radar, but it receives gamma rays." ”

Hu Feng was very serious, as if he was listening to an experimental class: "When radioactive substances decay, they will release a neutron and positron, and the positron will neutralize the electrons produced by the reaction with oxygen and glucose in the blood of ants to release a pair of gamma rays. Gamma rays are the most penetrating in the universe, and their density can reach the receiver directly. ”

The operator said to the listener, "Give me those two data cables." Hu Feng handed it to him: "There is a photoelectric conversion element in the receiver, which can convert the intensity of the ray into an electric current. He used the first data cable to connect the receiver to the converter: "The function of the converter is mainly to convert the analog signal sent by the receiver into a digital signal for visualization on the computer. I saw it, that's it," he finished assembling the 'smart scanner' and turned it on. The machine is very quiet, and the display screen slowly conjures up the true face of the ant city-state.

The operator's right index finger slides on the computer tablet, moves the mouse arrow to the icon like an eyeball, double-clicks to open it, and the eyes of the old and young next to him are wide open.

Secret flashes of light appeared on the screen, like a summer night full of stars. The operator selects a horizontal single-layer slice from the drop-down menu of the software, and the chaotic situation of the image immediately disappears, revealing an abstract community of light spots, like an abstract painting in motion. Some of the clusters of the bright spots in the painting are elliptical, some are irregular polygons, some are streamlined in thin arcs, and some are simply not any shapes at all, just irregular lumps.

"The ant nest is a multi-storey structure, like the high-rise building in our business center, and the reason why it is so vast at the beginning is that the ants on all the floors are stacked together."

"You're saying that this point of light represents an ant?" Hu Feng asked with a seeming affirmation.

"Yes, the computer now shows a section of the nest at 30 centimeters."

"A complete ant nest is usually 50-80 floors, up to 0.5-1 meter deep, and they are the inhabitants of this self-built city." The old professor added.

"Is there a way to see how many layers this nest has?" Hu Feng interjected.

"Absolutely." The young postdoc leaned over and flicked a button on the receiver, then opened the menu again, selecting the longitudinal monolayer section.

The pattern on the screen immediately changed, the light points disappeared, and in its place were dark and dark textures.

"See? Now it's active X-ray mode (previously passive gamma-ray mode), and the layman's point is to take X-rays of ants' cities. You can count the number of layers that alternate between light and dark. ”

Hu Feng really counted it, and when he raised his head, his eyes were full of amazement: "Didn't you say 50-80 floors?" How does this have 125 floors? ”

The old professor's eyes also showed brilliance: "The more complex the city, the smarter the builders." Check the depth. ”

As soon as the professor finished speaking, his student had already reported the number: "2 meters." ”

"It's twice as deep as a normal ant nest, which is incredible. Can you see the specific structure of a certain layer? ”

"No problem." The operator clicked on the horizontal slice in the menu again, but this time he chose multi-layer, he set the thickness of 10 centimeters, and the position was set at 100 layers, this time the computer hesitated for 8 or 9 seconds, it seems that this multi-layer scanning and then superimposition method is more consuming of computer resources.

The construction of the 10-centimeter-thick structure is a dynamic process, and parts of this ant building are superimposed on the screen layer by layer, which is a bit like 3D printing, except that here the image is printed.

This is the 100th basement floor. There are many cavities in the 10 cm texture band on the screen, each of which is connected by a thin band, and the middle cavity is particularly large, and the edge is wrapped in a layer of very dark substance.

"These ants are really industrious, there are so many rooms, and each room is connected by a passage."

"What's the black around this big room?" Hu Feng just likes to ask questions.

"This?" The postdoc also had a hard time, and he set his sights on his teacher.

This time, even ant sociologists replied: "Queens like to live in the deep layer, but generally do not live in the bottom." This is 100 floors, and this large room may be the palace of the queen ant. ”

When the old professor said the word palace, the listener's eyes widened, but the teacher didn't pay attention, just considered the following words: "I have also dug several large ant nests before, in order to prevent moisture and safety, the cave where the queen ant stays generally has an isolation medium, and the popular point is the ceiling, but this so-called ceiling is generally pasted by sawdust and the saliva of worker ants, which is a bit like swallows building nests, except that the former uses sawdust and the latter uses soil." ”

"The color of the wood image should be lighter than that of the earth and rock, and this one is almost close to black." The postdoc said suspiciously.

That's where the answer can't be. What happens like this? ”

"Unless it's metal."

"Metal?" One old and one young sighed.