Die on Mars - Chapter 249

c247 Day 339 (2) The truly unknowable future

The sun has been setting for a long time.

Lao Mao and Tang Yue sat on the roof of the car, with the star charts spread out on their knees and looking up at the sky.

But the weather tonight was gloomy, and the starry sky was no longer as bright as before. The atmosphere exuded a turbid light red light, and the starry sky seemed to be covered by a layer of gauze. Tang Yue squinted his eyes, “There are much fewer stars tonight than yesterday. Probably only a few hundred.”

“Because the weather is bad, the sky is not always clear on Mars.” The old cat opened its eyelids with its thumb and index toe, and swept around with a round cat eye.

“Can you see them?”

“Of course.” The old cat turned his head, “The average person can distinguish the minimum brightness of fifth-magnitude stars. Even if your eyesight is stronger than normal people, the resolution limit will not be lower than sixth-magnitude stars. This is your physiological limitation. Human beings’ The diameter of the pupil is no more than five millimeters, and it can only allow up to twenty square millimeters of light to pass through, but I am different, I am a cat.”

The old cat’s pupils suddenly dilated, like the lens of a camera.

“The structure of mammalian eyes is not fundamentally different from that of camera telescopes. Of course, the larger the aperture, the more powerful the telescope will be.”

The old cat was quite proud.

“What kind of mammal are you?” Tang Yue muttered.

The old cat’s ears stood up.

“Why am I not a mammal?” the old cat corrected, “my status in animal taxonomy is the United Nations subspecies of the phylum Vertebrate, class Mammalia, order Carnivora, family Felis, genus Doraemon.”

Lao Mao and Tang Yue judged their own longitude based on the positions of the two satellites Phobos and Deimos. Phobos Phobos is quite conspicuous in the clear night sky. It is a small spot, about six times the size of the moon. One-tenth the size of Phobos. In fact, the diameter of Phobos is much smaller than that of the moon. The diameter of Phobos is only 26 kilometers. The reason why it looks so big is because its orbit is too low. Phobos is only 6,000 kilometers away from the ground. , flying almost close to the surface of Mars, and can orbit Mars three times a day.

Deimos, on the other hand, looks no different from an ordinary star. It is a dim dot. If its location is not known in advance, most people will not even be able to find it.

Demos deviated from its original orbit in the recent collision. The energy carried by the Tom-Tang-Mai comet was amazing. Even though it was only slightly scratched, Demos’ little Chery QQ was also thrown away. , the original nearly circular orbit 23,000 kilometers above the ground has now become a large ellipse.

“Phobos is about to rise.” The old cat counted the time and pointed to the west.

Tang Yue looked in the direction pointed by its paws. Under the dark red sky, the blurry spot of light had already risen above the horizon.

Phobos does not have an obvious and clear edge like the moon. It is just a large rock with a diameter of more than 20 kilometers, and the surface is covered with craters. In the words of the old cat, “it is like a potato that has been gnawed by mice.” The reflectivity of such a thing to sunlight is actually very low.

“Forbos is also very gloomy.” Tang Yue said, “This weather is like smog.”

“The reason for atmospheric activity. I once told you that the structure of the Martian atmosphere is completely different from that of the Earth. There is a troposphere tens of kilometers high.” The old cat looked up at the sky. “The wind can roll dust and sand into the sky, and then They flow around the world forty kilometers above our heads, carrying them to every corner of the planet.”

“How’s it going?” Tang Yue asked, “Are we on the right track?”

“There’s a slight deviation.” The old cat replied.

“How much difference?”

“Five cents, within my expectation.” The old cat straightened his forearm, then moved slightly to the left, “When we set off tomorrow morning, we should go slightly east.”

“You have the final say on your navigation.” Tang Yue fell down lazily, “As long as I can reach the destination accurately, I don’t care whether I turn left or right. Do you think I am very open-minded?”

“How do I know if you are angry?” Old Cat shrugged, “If you are angry, do it yourself. I think you can deviate to the North Pole.”

“Open-minded!” Tang Yue lay beside the old cat and turned to shout at it.

The old cat covered his face with the star chart, and also lay down on his back, resting his head on the back of his head and crossing his legs.

The ears of the two cats twitched, and the stars tilted back and forth rhythmically – the old cat turned out to be humming, but it didn’t shake its legs, it shook its ears.

“There are still thirty kilometers tomorrow, and there are still thirty kilometers the day after tomorrow.” Tang Yue said, “The third day should be here. These days have been like years.”

“But God knows what will be waiting for us on the third day.” Old Cat turned his head under the form, his eyes shining through the gaps in the white paper, “You may know what will be tomorrow, and you will also know what will be the day after tomorrow. , but you don’t know what will happen on the third day. On that night three days later, you may be still where you are, or you may be at the end of the universe.”

Tang Yue was stunned for a moment, and it took him a few seconds to understand what the old cat meant.

He cannot see the future through time. Three days is actually the infinite future. Where will he be in three days?

At destination?

At Kunlun Station?

On Earth?

Or in a certain cantilever of the Milky Way, in a galaxy outside the Milky Way, or even outside the observable universe?

Except for the first one with the highest probability, he may be in every corner of the universe.

No.

Is the first one really the most likely?

The probability of him being anywhere in this universe is probably equal.

Tang Yue thought silently.

“What do you want to say?” Tang Yue asked, “What is truly unknown is the future?”

“The truly unknowable thing is the future.”

Tang Yue was silent for a moment, then took out a pen from his pocket and raised it into the air, “But we can actually predict the future. Just like this pen, if I let go of my hand now, it will fall immediately. We can accurately predict its speed and state at any time and position based on Newton’s laws of motion.”

“Then if you let go of it, will it fall on you?” the old cat asked.

“Of course.” Tang Yue replied.

“Then let go of it.”

Tang Yue glanced at it and wondered what was useful in this experiment. Normal people could see that if he let go, the pencil would fall under the influence of gravity.

He let go.

But the pencil did not fall on Tang Yue.

Because the old cat stretched out his claws and caught it.

“We can only predict the future within a specific system to a limited extent. We cannot calculate the unknown influencing factors outside the system, just like you can’t predict that I will suddenly stretch out my hand using Newton’s laws of motion.” The old cat shook the pencil, “Prediction Conditions are required, and the condition is to draw a line. Since the line is drawn, there will be inside and outside the line. There will always be unknown factors outside the system in this universe. They may interfere with you, or they may not interfere with you – the most extreme of them all. The interference is that the spacecraft of a certain super civilization lands in front of us in the next second, ties you up, and then reaches the other end of the galaxy through the wormhole.”

“You are sophistry.” Tang Yue didn’t know how to refute the old cat.

“But it’s logical,” the old cat snorted.

Tang Yue stared at the dark red night sky, not knowing what he was thinking. The limit of his vision was that he could see thin clouds twenty kilometers high. Twenty kilometers above the clouds, the atmosphere was flowing slowly and silently, carrying billions of people. Tons of dust and gravel cover the entire Martian continent bit by bit.