The Disaster of Extinction

The feeling of depression in his heart became stronger and stronger, and before Thomson even had time to respond to Thomas, he calculated on the computer. This is the keen intuition of a top scientist. He has a premonition that a crisis is brewing, and a catastrophe that no one expected is happening quietly...

Ten fingers tapped the keyboard quickly, listing various equations: kinetic energy formula, friction formula, aerodynamics, fluid mechanics and gravity...

Soon, these formulas were sorted out on the screen. After hitting Enter, the computer started to calculate, and Thomson's breathing began to become heavy. He felt a little dark in front of his eyes, and there were faint signs of fainting.

The running speed of the supercomputer was very fast, and the result came out in less than a second. In an instant, he felt his heart was sternly grabbed by a big hand, and his face was terribly pale. He really hoped he was wrong...

"Mentor, look at the ice I collected!" His student Thomas ran into the laboratory excitedly holding a piece of plastic film. When he saw Thomson working, he stopped talking immediately.

Mentor Thomson is a very strict person, and he will be criticized if he interrupts his work. No one likes to be interrupted while working.

Since the earth exploded, both of them lost their relatives, and the normal teacher-student relationship has been shortened a lot, and Thomson's teacher has become more and more strict with him.

However, no matter what, Thomas can always feel a little love in these strict demands. Perhaps, they are already the most familiar people with each other.

"Thomas, come and see if I'm right." Thomson said in a weary tone, afraid that he might make a mistake.

This time, he deduced it again on the computer, and wrote each formula step by step, which took a long time. In fact, according to the usual level, these simple derivations would not take so long at all, as if these few lines of formulas took his whole life.

"This is..."

Thomas didn't notice that there was something wrong with Thomson's expression. He looked at it curiously for a while, and the genius's brain quickly realized, "Oh...uh...I see, you are calculating a ball moving at high speed. How far does it fly in the air? Well... there should be no problem with the calculation process. Ah, this is..."

Seeing those familiar parameters, Thomas suddenly thought of a possibility, his eyes widened, and his whole body trembled. He rubbed his eyes, looked again, and found that he was right . The panic in his heart could hardly be described in words. He sat down on the ground and saw Thomson's gaze head-on.

"Has God abandoned us?!"

...

Jack got the news the next moment. At the beginning, his blood surged, his head was dizzy, and he felt like the sky was falling in an instant. What kind of situation is this? One wave is not calm, and another wave is rising. Human beings have not even solved the food crisis, and this kind of thing happened again...

"I can't fall... I can't fall..." This overwhelming despair lasted only for a while, Jack bit his lip violently, and the violent bite made his mouth turn red in an instant. Pain, he calmed down a little. As the general manager of the moon base, I must not fall into despair like ordinary people.

This is true in all likelihood. Although he was not born as a scientist, he can still understand the basic physics formulas, because they are not esoteric, that is, at the level of college physics.

From the perspective of energy, these formulas convert mechanical energy into internal energy due to the effect of friction, and there is nothing wrong with it.

But because of this, the troubles faced by human beings are great! A drop of cold sweat dripped from Jack's forehead.

"Miss Yuriko, I'm going to hold an emergency meeting now, requiring the heads of each production team and all important scientists to attend! It's very urgent, immediately, immediately!" Jack said eagerly.

"What? Is there something important? I must remind you that the transfer of so many important people will have a huge impact on the base's production!"

"No, I have something important to say! This is an order!"

...

When the meeting was held, there were even some riots. A small number of people were dissatisfied with Jack's behavior. They felt that Jack, an outsider, suddenly took control of the entire base, and there was still some dissatisfaction in their hearts.

But at this time, Jack was too lazy to argue with them. He cleared his throat and said directly, "Everyone, I have something urgent to say, it may not be very seconds, everyone please be mentally prepared."

With a trace of suspicion, everyone sat down.

He turned on the computer screen, drew a ball, and drew a layer of atmosphere outside, and began to demonstrate.

"Look, this is our planet—the moon."

"Here is the almost destroyed earth. Our moon is orbiting the earth because of the gravitational force of the earth."

" The moment , due to the mass distribution, the gravitational force changed, so the orbit of our moon also changed... The eccentricity of the elliptical orbit is about 0.21."

"As the orbit changes, although the far places are farther away from the earth, the near places are also closer to the earth."

"We know that a large amount of gas and dust is shrouded on the earth. In the place where Australia in the southern hemisphere faced past, there is a super-large air mass diffused by a giant mushroom cloud. As it orbits the earth, our moon will soon pass through that area. There's a cloud of air."

"Everyone knows that the density of this air mass is very low, less than one-hundred-thousandth of the earth's atmosphere. It is a mixture of water, sand and air, and it does no harm to us humans."

"Everyone doesn't take it seriously, but, because of this, we all ignore it!"

After hearing this, the people below started whispering, not knowing what Jack was going to say.

"Listen to me, even such a thin atmosphere will bring a certain amount of air resistance, and when the moon is moving, it will generate a lot of friction with the atmosphere, converting part of its kinetic energy into internal energy."

"Think about it, the moon has such a huge volume, the air resistance is also very huge. Therefore, our moon has been slowing down these days..."

Before the words were finished, some quick-thinking people had realized something and fidgeted. The rest of the people also began to faintly realize that something was really wrong. The slowing down of the moon is definitely not a good thing.

The entire meeting place became silent, and everyone began to listen to Jack's speech attentively, and some people's small thoughts could only be temporarily hidden in their hearts.

Jack paused, and after everyone digested it, he continued: "When the speed of the moon decreases, the centripetal force required for circular motion will be less than the gravitational force of the earth on the moon, so the moon will be sucked in by the earth a little bit. , and then the whole system will maintain a new equilibrium."

"This balance is very complicated. With the loss of kinetic energy, the moon's orbital eccentricity will increase, and the lowest point of the orbit will gradually move closer to the earth, which is very dangerous."

"Because the closer to the earth, the more meteorites there are, the higher the probability of being attacked. Moreover, as the density of the atmosphere increases, the kinetic energy of the moon will be consumed faster..."

"We speculate that there are three final results. The first is that the moon is hit by a giant meteorite. The probability of this possibility is extremely high. A meteorite with a diameter of ten kilometers will trigger a magnitude 13 earthquake and destroy our entire base. "

"Second, suppose we were not hit by a meteorite. However, the moon is too close to the earth, and it is likely to be torn apart due to the pull of tidal gravity ..."

"If we are lucky enough not to be hit by an asteroid, and the moon is not torn apart by gravity...then, after the kinetic energy is reduced to a certain level, there will be a risk of a moon-earth collision."

"This process won't be short, but it won't be long either..." Jack paused, and listed the formulas given by Professor Thomson on the screen, a dense list.

"According to conservative calculations, six months is the safest time!"

"Six months later, we will be directly threatened by the outer meteorite! An asteroid with a diameter of ten kilometers can completely wipe out human beings."

"It is also possible that the moon will be torn apart due to gravity, so there is no need to talk about the fate of us humans."

"The best result is twelve months. After twelve months, there is a risk of the moon and the earth colliding!"