Chapter 70 Carbon Dioxide
Zhou Cheng gently pulled his arm out from under Liu Yu's neck, got off the bed, and stood in front of the window.
I opened the curtains and the bright sunshine shone on me.
He raised his head and looked at the blue sky.
He seemed to see a magical scene.
The powerful energy from the massive Sun travels 150 million kilometers to Earth. As it makes contact with the Earth's atmosphere, the light and heat heat the top of the atmosphere, giving the thin gases there even more energy.
As a result, some gas molecules and atoms gained speeds sufficient to escape the Earth's gravity. As a result, they escaped the Earth's gravitational field and entered interstellar space, never to return.
At the same time, based on the effects of the Earth's magnetic field, some special electric fields will be formed in the upper atmosphere, in which particles are ionized and can also have higher speeds to escape the Earth's gravity.
In addition, there will be bombardment from cosmic high-energy rays, high-energy radiation from the sun and other celestial bodies, etc., which can also make the particles in the earth's atmosphere reach a high enough speed.
At the same time, water molecules are continuously ionized into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen has a lower mass and is easier to escape from the Earth's gravitational field.
An estimated average of 220 tons of matter escapes from the Earth every day, or about 80,000 tons of matter every year, into space through these means.
This is the natural exchange of matter between the earth and space.
The Earth is not isolated in the universe.
These materials that enter space from the Earth will be affected by more factors. They may eventually fall onto other planets, fall onto the sun, or eventually leave the solar system and go to other star systems.
At the same time, the Earth's atmosphere is also related to humans living on the surface - even if it is only humans in the feudal era.
Thus, a chain of material connection is formed, originating from humans, then the atmosphere - gas escapes - enters space - and reaches outer galaxies.
It was difficult to assess the effectiveness of this material chain, but Zhou Cheng had to admit that it was indeed very likely to exist.
And since there is the possibility of material exchange, there is also the possibility of exerting influence.
So……
Is it possible that even in the feudal era of human civilization, there existed such a mechanism that could influence alien civilizations?
This is a possibility, but obviously, the probability of this possibility is extremely low.
After all, particles that reach the Earth's escape velocity appear to be moving extremely fast to humans, at several kilometers or even more than ten kilometers per second, but this speed is still too slow compared to the vastness of the universe.
At an average speed of ten kilometers per second, it would take about 130,000 years to travel from Earth to Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun.
At the same time, the 80,000 tons of matter that are transported every day may seem huge, but again, compared to the vastness of the universe, it is nothing. Their movement is also random, and they cannot aim at a single target and reach all of it.
Even if some particles originating from Earth eventually reach Proxima Centauri, how much will remain?
This probably cannot be measured using units of measurement for macroscopic substances such as grams and milligrams, but should be measured using a few atoms or molecules.
Even the possibility of a few atoms or molecules eventually reaching Proxima Centauri is extremely low, not to mention the rest of the star systems.
After thinking about it carefully, Zhou Cheng temporarily put this possibility aside and stopped thinking about it for the time being. Instead, he began to think about another possibility.
It is also caused by the light from the sun.
This brings us to another issue.
In the universe, how can we determine whether there is life on a distant planet, especially intelligent life that can carry out large-scale transformation of the environment and has high intelligence and a certain level of technology?
Obviously, only intelligent civilizations with high intelligence and a certain level of technology could possess the ability to carry out large-scale environmental transformation on a planet. Therefore, a logical conclusion can be drawn: as long as a planet is detected to have undergone large-scale environmental transformation, it can be basically confirmed that an intelligent civilization exists on that planet.
So, how do you detect whether a planet has undergone large-scale environmental transformation?
Human scientists at the peak of their powers found a way.
When a planet orbits between its host star and the Earth, the light released by the star, which passes through the planet's atmosphere and reaches the Earth, can reveal the elemental composition of the planet's atmosphere.
Some more special gases can reveal to a certain extent whether the planet has undergone large-scale environmental transformation.
For example...carbon dioxide.
The high or low concentration of carbon dioxide is actually irrelevant. After all, there are all kinds of planets in the universe, with high concentrations like Venus and low concentrations like Mars. It's all normal.
But the key point is whether the carbon dioxide content is abnormal compared to other indicators, and whether its content has fluctuated dramatically over a period of time.
The main reason why carbon dioxide is an important indicator is that it is associated with a very important measure of biological activity.
Energy acquisition.
Combustion was the most important way to obtain energy in the early days of intelligent civilization.
Burning wood, hay, straw, and even with the development of technology, burning coal, oil, methane, etc., are all combustion.
And combustion happens to produce a lot of carbon dioxide.
Therefore, if through detection, people see that in the gas structure of the atmosphere of a distant planet, the content of other gases remains unchanged, but the carbon dioxide content is abnormally high, and only begins to increase rapidly after a certain period of time, people have reason to believe that the planet has undergone a large amount of combustion process in the past period of time.
Intelligent life possesses an unparalleled ability to transform its environment. This ability to capture vast amounts of energy while simultaneously producing vast quantities of carbon dioxide is not comparable to a mere forest fire.
At the same time, even in the feudal era with a lower level of technology, it also had a high carbon emission capacity.
Because they only have one way to obtain energy, basically they can only obtain it through burning. At the same time, there is no restraint.
It is common to burn down the land or forest in order to open up farmland.
So... has the Earth's atmosphere already experienced such a drastic change in carbon dioxide content?
If there is an alien civilization in the vast deep space, pointing its telescope at the Earth, have they already noticed the existence of an intelligent civilization on Earth through this change?
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