Hot Wavelength

Chapter 4 (The Dreamer 2): The Little Girl's Letter

June 2028, Liangguo Nidu Hasen River Park

At dusk, Daphne Braun arrived early at Hassen River Park for her first date with her crush, Michael Max.

Daphne sat leisurely on the bench, looking up at the architectural masterpiece, VESSEL, made of a huge steel frame.

Hasen River is located in the western part of Nido Core Island, which is a synonym and microcosm of the prosperity of Liang Kingdom. Its eastern part has been bustling with skyscrapers and straight, numbered streets for a century, while the western part of Core Island, where Hasen River is located, is relatively backward.

In 2019, with the stunning debut of the VESSEL public building as a new landmark, the Hassen River New District, the largest regional redevelopment project in Liangguo's history with a total investment of over US$250 billion, rose from the ground, injecting fresh technological and artistic atmosphere into the century-old metropolis of Nidu.

Michael walked toward Daphne. He was muscular and broad-shouldered, and walked at a slightly faster pace, as if carrying the wind.

Daphne stood up, facing Michael, a smile playing on her lips as she scrutinized her idol like a scanner.

Michael had dark brown hair, brown eyes, a straight nose and mouth, and reddish skin from his face to his neck.

That's not rosy. Any healthy person's skin can be rosy, but that kind of red skin is genetic and is more common among ancient European hunting and fishing tribes.

That skin color evoked the thick fog of Plymouth, the surging tides of Amsterdam, and the giant waves of the Cape of Good Hope.

That skin tone is the result of being exposed to the scorching sun, rubbed with sea salt, and washed by sudden rain.

That skin color belongs to sailors, captains, and adventurous navigators.

This man is none other than the world's richest man, and the founder and CEO of Esbay Space Technology Company:

Michael Max.

"Hi, are you Daphne?" Michael said first.

“Yes, I’m Daphne. Are you Michael?” Daphne replied humorously to Michael’s face, which was recognized by everyone.

The two had barely settled down on the bench when Michael made a startling remark:

“My brain-computer interface project has made some progress. The external brain VESSEL that assists my thinking has searched for the intersection between you and me, which is quite interesting.”

Daphne looked at Michael with curiosity and doubt, thinking, "Isn't VESSEL the public building in front of us? How did it become his 'external brain'?"
Michael's next words were even more direct and surprised Daphne even more. Michael said:

"Excuse me for being presumptuous, but Vessel told me that Daphne Braun is very likely my girlfriend."

"Huh?!" Daphne's eyes widened, unsure how to maintain her composure. They hadn't even exchanged two sentences before he got straight to the point. Wasn't that a bit too direct?
Michael seemed to understand Daphne's thoughts and sent her a text message saying:

"Take a look at this letter first."

Daphne opened the text message on her tablet. It was a letter that read:

To Mr. Michael Max and his girlfriend:

My name is Li Xiaoxuan. I am an ordinary girl who grew up in Qingliang Valley, Wutai Mountain, Shanxi, China. I am writing this letter to you with great trepidation.

我出生于1999年12月23日，今天是我的13岁生日。昨天，也就是2012年12月22日，夜里我做了一个非常奇怪的梦。

I am floating in space, directly below the North Star, looking down at the solar system. Earth is on its winter solstice, located in the 6-hour direction of the celestial sphere.

Venus and Mars are each 120 degrees away from Earth, forming a large equilateral triangle. Mercury, Venus, and Saturn form a straight line relative to the Sun.

A set of data appeared before my eyes, showing the conjunction periods of Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Saturn with Earth, corresponding to 117 days, 584 days, 780 days, and 378 days, respectively.

I was falling rapidly, and the Earth became clearer and clearer. I saw a man facing two discs, one with 365 markings and the other with 260 markings.

He picked up a piece of rope and tied a knot, representing 18980 days, or 52 years. He then carved an equation on the stone slab: 19.19.19.0.0.19.0.0=1.0.0.T.0.1.T.0.0. A voice told me that these numbers represent days, related to the Mayan short and long calendars, and that only Michael Max and his girlfriend, who studies Martian explosions, could decipher them.

Suddenly Mars turned into a giant fireball, and Earth and Venus also turned into fireballs, which startled me awake.

That's all for now, no need to reply.

As Daphne read the letter, she pondered it, and then asked Michael, puzzled:

"This letter was written to you more than ten years ago, and you're only seeing it now?"

Michael replied, “This email was sent to my work inbox. I have so many emails that I never saw it before. After we made an appointment, Veselle brought it to my attention. You told me you’ve been researching the Martian explosion problem lately, right?”

Daphne Braun is 29 years old and, like most girls, longs for love and idolizes male gods. However, once she returns to serious astronomical discussions, she transforms back into a somewhat accomplished scientist.

Daphne had just graduated with her doctorate and joined the Psyche exploration project team at the Liangguo Space Agency. From the beginning of her astronomy studies, Daphne had been filled with curiosity and interest in the asteroid belt. After research, she proposed a bold hypothesis and shared it with Michael via mobile phone chat.

Daphne's hypothesis is that the asteroid belt is composed of fragments from a Martian explosion, originating from Mars.

Daphne's idea wasn't a sudden whim. First of all, how did the asteroid belt form? There are several hypotheses in the astronomical community regarding this question.

The hypothesis that the material in the asteroid belt originated from outside the solar system has been disproven because it is impossible to explain why 50 asteroids could cross the solar system, reach, and almost all of them stop between Jupiter and Mars.

Another hypothesis is that the asteroid belt is remnant of an ancient planet that exploded in the solar system. This hypothesis has two inconsistencies.

First, the mass is insufficient. The total mass of the asteroid belt is only 1% of the mass of Earth. If a planet explodes, where did the rest of the mass go?
Secondly, after a planet forms, the inward cohesive force would be extremely strong due to the high-speed rotation of the star disk and its internal gravity. Within the framework of modern physics, no reasonable mechanism for planetary explosion has yet been discovered.

So Daphne thought, if the asteroid belt wasn't a complete planetary explosion, but just the broken shell of Mars' surface, wouldn't the missing mass make sense?
Moreover, the Martian explosion hypothesis can explain another phenomenon.

The four planets closest to the Sun in our solar system are rocky planets, while the other four farther away are gas giants. Mercury, Venus, and Earth are examples of planets whose size increases with distance from the Sun, while Mars' size suddenly decreases.

Mars has a radius of 3389 kilometers, which is only slightly more than half the radius of Earth.

The closer a rocky planet is to the outer edge of the celestial disk, the larger it tends to be. This is consistent with the pattern of planet formation under the influence of celestial disk motion, because the more distant a rocky planet is, the larger the area of ​​the celestial disk it sweeps across, and the greater its chance of acquiring more constituent materials.

The asteroid belt is classified into three types based on their composition: carbonaceous C-type, siliconous S-type, and pure iron-nickel M-type. M-type asteroids are very rare, with only Psyche discovered so far. It is believed to have originated from the metallic lava core of a Martian volcano. The remaining 99.9% of asteroids are C-type and S-type.

If the S-type is the rock of the Martian crust and the C-type is the water ice and dust on the Martian surface, then when Mars explodes, with the same kinetic energy, the surface water ice "goes out first" and will fly farther than the deeper rocks. That is, the S-type is closer to the side of Mars and the Sun, while the C-type is farther away, which perfectly matches the distribution of the asteroid belt.

Michael listened with great interest to Daphne's hypothesis about the Martian explosion, and added:

"Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars, is about 21 kilometers high, which is equivalent to the combined height of the Mariana Trench and the Himalayas on Earth. If Mars had exploded and lost all its seawater, and the seabed was used as the Martian reference surface, then the height of Olympus Mons would not be surprising."

Daphne nodded excitedly and said, "What's most unique about Olympus Mons is that its slope is only 5 degrees, almost flat. And at the edge of this large, flat area, there is a clean, 10-kilometer-deep section, just like a cracked walnut shell, with some pieces flying away. Olympus Mons is the original Martian surface that was left behind, and what we now see as the surface of Mars is the bottom of the original Martian ocean."

Michael said, "That's right, so it's not surprising that there are traces of a lot of water flowing on the surface of Mars."

Daphne's gaze lingered on the numbers at the end of the little girl's letter, and she asked Michael:
"19.19.19.0.0.19.0.0, this number should be related to the Mayan calendar, right? Does it correspond to the number of days?"

Michael replied, "The dots separating the numbers indicate the number of digits. We usually don't use dots between numbers because it's a decimal system. The Maya used a base-20 system, so they used dots to separate the numbers to avoid misunderstandings."

Michael looked at the string of numbers, then at Daphne, and said mysteriously:
“VESSEL used the Mayan Long Count calendar to calculate the number of days corresponding to this set of numbers, which is more than 230 billion days.”

"Huh? What kind of calendar is this? Over 230 billion days, that's equivalent to how many years?"

"More than 6300 million years!"

Michael replied.

&
The poem composed of collected verses at the end of the chapter:
Even the ends of the earth have their limits. —Song Dynasty, Yan Shu
A divine connection spanning millennia, unknown to this world. — Huang Tingjian, Song Dynasty
However, he did not mind that we were here, Song, Fang Yue
Clearly written contract indicating transmission. Song Dynasty, Monk Dingxu.
(End of this chapter)