Chapter 7 The first year of the crisis era, life options

Yang Dong wants to save herself, but she knows that there is little hope. She stood on the balcony on the top floor of the control center, overlooking the dead accelerator.The circumference of the accelerator is twenty kilometers, and it can barely be seen from this height.It is not built in an underground tunnel as usual, but placed in a concrete pipe on the ground, which looks like a big period in the sunset. What is the period?Hopefully it's just physics. In the past, Yang Dong had a basic belief: life and the world may be ugly, but at the end of the microcosm and macrocosm they are harmonious and perfect, and the everyday world is just a bubble floating on this perfect ocean.Now it seems that the everyday world has become a beautiful appearance, and the microcosm it contains and the macrocosm it contains may be even more chaotic and ugly.

This is terrible. In fact, that’s all. She can live without physics. She can choose an industry that has nothing to do with theoretical physics, get married and have children, and live her life peacefully like every woman.Of course, for her, this is only half-life. Another thing is about mothers.Yang Dong once discovered by accident that the information received in her mother's computer had a very high level of encryption, which aroused her strong curiosity.But the decrypted information is not put into the file shredder, it is just deleted.Like all elderly people, my mother is not familiar with computers and the Internet. She doesn't know that even if the hard disk is formatted, the information on it can be easily restored.Yang Dong did the first thing in his life behind his mother's back: he restored some of the deleted information.It was very informative, and she read it for days and learned the secrets of her mother and the three-body world.

Yang Dong was almost overwhelmed by the shock. The mother who depended on each other turned out to be another person, and it was the kind of person she couldn't even believe existed in this world.She didn't dare to ask her mother, she never dared, because if she asked, her mother would really become another person forever.Let his mother keep his secrets, while Yang Dong pretends that his mother is still the original mother, and life can continue. Of course, for Yang Dong, this life only has half his life left. Living with Half-Life is actually nothing. According to her observation, quite a few people around are living in Half-Life. As long as they are good at forgetting and adapting, Half-Life can live peacefully and even happily.

But these two things add up to one life. Yang Dong held on to the railing of the balcony, looking at the abyss downstairs, fear accompanied by temptation.She felt the railing under her own weight shake suddenly, and immediately took a step back as if she was electrocuted.She didn't dare to stay here any longer, so she turned back and walked into the terminal hall. The terminals of the supercomputer are distributed here. This host is not connected to the accelerator and is only used for offline processing of results.The terminals that were all turned off a few days ago are now on again, which makes Yang Dong feel a little relieved, but she knows that this place has nothing to do with the accelerator now, and the host computer has been occupied by other projects.There was only one young man in the hall. He stood up after seeing Yang Dong. He was wearing a pair of wide-rimmed glasses with bright green frames, which looked very special.Yang Dong said that she just came to pick up some things left here.After knowing who she is, the green glasses became enthusiastic and introduced her to the project running on the supercomputer.

This is a mathematical model of Earth evolution that simulates the past and future evolution of Earth's surface morphology.Unlike previous similar projects, this model incorporates biological, geological, atmospheric, oceanographic and astronomical factors.The green glasses also turned on several large screens for Yang Dong to see. She saw that the data tables and curves displayed on them were completely different from the previous data tables and curves. They were all vividly colored graphics, as if overlooking the continents and oceans from a high altitude.The green glasses flexibly dragged the mouse to demonstrate that several parts of the graph are zoomed in and thinned into a forest or a river.Yang Dong felt that the breath of nature was permeating the place that was once completely occupied by abstract data and theories, and this feeling made her feel a kind of relief from the claustrophobia.

After listening to the introduction of the glasses, Yang Dong took his things, bid farewell politely and prepared to leave.When she turned and walked towards the door, she felt the green glasses still watching her.She was used to this kind of gaze from a man, and she didn't feel disgusted. Instead, she felt the comfort of the winter sun shining on her body.She suddenly had the desire to communicate with people, so she stopped and turned to face the green glasses. "Do you believe in God?" As soon as these words came out, Yang Dong herself was surprised, but when she thought of the model running here, this question was not too abrupt, so she was somewhat relieved.

The green glasses were also stunned by this question, and opened their mouths in a daze for a long time before carefully asking, "What kind of God?" "It's God." Yang Dong said simply, the overwhelming feeling of exhaustion appeared again, and she didn't have the energy to explain anything more. "I do not believe." "However," Yang Dong pointed to the continents and oceans on the big screen, "the environment where life can exist, and various physical parameters are very harsh, such as liquid water, which only exists in a very narrow temperature range. This is even more so from a scientific point of view, if the parameters of the big bang deviate from one part in a billion billion, there will be no heavy elements, and there will be no life. Isn’t this a clear sign of intelligent design?”

The green glasses shook his head, "I don't understand the big bang, but the life environment on the earth you mentioned is not the case at all. The earth has produced life, and life is also changing the earth. The current earth environment is actually the interaction of the two. The result." The green glasses thought for a while, grabbed the mouse, "Let's simulate one." He called up a setting interface from a large screen, which was a large number of dizzying parameter windows, but he Remove the hook in the top selection box, and all the windows become virtual. "Let's remove the life option, and see what the earth has evolved without life. We can only draw a rough line, or else It takes too much time."

Yang Dong saw from a control terminal that the mainframe started to run at full power. The giant computers are all electric tigers, and the power consumption at this time is equivalent to that of a small county town, but she didn't stop the green glasses. A newly formed planet appeared on the big screen, its surface red-hot like coal fresh from a furnace.Time passed in geological time, the planet gradually cooled, and the color and texture of the surface continued to change slowly, which seemed hypnotic.After a few minutes, an orange planet appeared on the screen, signaling the completion of the simulation.

"This is the roughest calculation, and it will take a month for an accurate simulation." The green glasses said, and at the same time moved the mouse, swooping down from space to the surface of the planet.The field of vision swept across the vast desert, flying over a group of strangely shaped peaks, those mountains were like huge pillars; then, flying over the bottomless rift valley and a circular basin like a crater. "Where is this?" Yang Dong asked in confusion. "Earth. If there is no life, the earth has evolved to the present, and the surface is like this."

"But... what about the ocean?" "No oceans, no rivers, it's all dry." "You mean, without life, there wouldn't even be liquid water on Earth?" "It's probably even more amazing than that. It's a rough simulation of course, but at least it gives you a sense of how much life has influenced the way Earth is now," "Can……" "Do you think that life is just a thin, soft, sparse, fragile thing on the surface of the earth?" "Isn't it?" "Then you are ignoring the power of time. A team of ants keeps carrying rocks the size of rice grains. Give them a billion years and they can move Mount Tai away. As long as the time is long enough, life is stronger than rocks and metals Much more powerful than hurricanes and volcanoes." "But the orogeny is mainly caused by geological forces." "Not necessarily. Life may not be able to build mountains, but it can change the distribution of mountains. For example, there are three mountains, and plants grow on two of them. The mountain without plants will be weathered and flattened quickly. What is said here is quickly Ten million years or so is really not long geologically." "How did the ocean disappear?" "It depends on the records of the simulation process. It's too troublesome, but you can guess. Plants, animals, and bacteria have all played an important role in forming the current atmosphere. If there is no life, the composition of the current atmosphere will be very different. It may have Unable to block ultraviolet rays and solar wind, the oceans will evaporate, and the earth's atmosphere will first become a steamer like Venus, water vapor will evaporate from the top of the atmosphere to space, and after billions of years, the earth will become dry." Yang Dong stopped talking, and silently looked at the dry yellow world. "So, the current earth is a home built by life for itself, and has nothing to do with God." When the green glasses removed the life option from the mathematical model on the big screen, she suddenly had a shocking thought. Now, she Finally asking the dreaded question: "What about the universe?" "Universe? What happened to the universe?" The green glasses who were shutting down the simulation process asked puzzled. "If there is a mathematical model like this to simulate the entire universe, like just now, when the life option is removed at the beginning of operation, what does the resulting universe look like?" "Of course it's still the way it is now, if the results are correct. The changes that life has on the world I just said are limited to the earth. In the universe, even if life exists, it is extremely rare, and its impact on the evolution process is negligible." Yang Dong wanted to say something but couldn't say it in the end, so he bid farewell to the green glasses again, and tried to show him a grateful smile.She came outside the building and looked up at the first starry sky. From the information on my mother's computer, we know that life in the universe is not rare, but the universe is very crowded. Then, how much has the universe been changed by life now, and to what level and depth has this change reached? The latter question especially frightened Yang Dong. Knowing that she could not save herself, she stopped thinking and tried to turn her thoughts into a black void, but there was still one final question stubbornly lingering in her subconscious mind: Is nature really natural?