Chapter 77 Balloon
The old man's expression was full of nostalgia.
"Back then, this place was a tourist attraction, a very famous ancient village. Especially this big tree, wow, it's amazing."
The young man was a little curious: "Professor Shen, this tree is just a little old, why is it so extraordinary?"
“You young people don’t understand.”
Professor Shen shook his head slightly: "At that time, people were willing to believe that this kind of centuries-old tree had some magical power.
Especially when in love, lovers believe that if they hang a red cloth strip with their names written on it, or a small copper lock or steel piece engraved with their names on the tree, their love will last forever.
Back then, the entire tree was covered with red ribbons and copper locks. When the wind blew, everything would sway along with the branches, which was a beautiful sight.
Professor Shen slowly recalled: "At that time, I was only eighteen or nineteen years old. My wife and I came here together and also hung a copper lock, probably in this position..."
His old, cloudy eyes searched slowly, finally pointing to an extremely thick tree trunk. On that trunk were at least dozens of copper locks hanging.
"Go look for it."
"Okay."
The young man set up a folding ladder and climbed up neatly. He searched among the pile of copper locks for a moment and finally chose one: "Shen Yuqing, Zhao Xiaomei... Professor Shen, is this it?"
"Yes, yes."
The young man pulled hard and pulled off the rusty copper lock.
Professor Shen took the copper lock and wiped the rust off it with a slight trembling, his thoughts seemed to have drifted far away.
He stared blankly for a long time, his old eyes gradually became moist, and a tear rolled down.
Wiping away tears in a panic, Professor Shen laughed and said, "I lost my composure, I lost my composure. Okay, let's dig."
Putting the copper lock into his pocket, he directed the others to start and took out a cutting tool.
Amidst the flying wood chips, the saw blade swiftly penetrated the trunk, extending more than a meter in. When it came out, it brought out a fan-shaped piece of wood.
On the wooden board, layers of different growth rings and colors intertwined. If you counted carefully, there were at least hundreds of them.
The secret of the carbon dioxide content in the Earth's atmosphere in this area hundreds of years ago is hidden in this piece of wood.
There was a missing piece of the branch of the big tree.
Professor Shen took a look and said, "Put something in it to support it so it won't be blown down by the wind."
He looked up at the remaining cloth strips and copper locks on the branches, as if recalling a scene he had witnessed in his youth: "After all, this tree still carries the wishes of so many people."
"Okay."
The young man found some wooden boards and stuffed them into the gap, and then the group left.
"Let's go, there's an ancient tree three hundred kilometers away."
The helicopter roared and took off again, flying over the mountains and jungles and into the distance, leaving behind only a deserted village full of dilapidated houses in the mountains.
…
Elsewhere on the earth, in a huge open space like a playground, a group of people are busy.
The open space was covered with a layer of transparent plastic-like material, covering an area of tens of thousands of square meters.
A large truck roared in, carrying a number of sturdy steel gas cylinders. Someone on the open ground took them, connected the interfaces, and began to release the gas from the cylinders into the plastic material.
As a large amount of gas entered, it gradually swelled up.
Gas cylinders were brought in one after another, and empty cylinders were taken away one after another.
This layer seems to be made of plastic and is getting bigger and taller.
Two days later, its highest point had reached more than 120 meters and its diameter had reached 100 meters.
It is even taller than the building next to it.
But even so, it is not yet full and there are still many wrinkles.
There was clearly no wind at the moment, but due to its enormous size, it was still swaying from side to side.
The steel cable used to fix it on the ground was stretched straight, making a continuous banging sound as it swayed.
People stopped inflating it and put a load under it.
It is a set of high-altitude atmospheric research equipment composed of multiple scientific research equipment, with a total mass of more than 600 kilograms.
"Release countdown, three, two, one, zero!"
The cable suddenly released. Under the buoyancy of hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of helium, the giant balloon, along with its payload, rose into the sky, higher and higher, until it could no longer be seen by those on the ground.
At this moment, people can see the curved structure of the earth through the camera mounted under the helium balloon.
This means that the height of the helium balloon has reached more than 10,000 meters at this moment.
But its ascent has not stopped.
Because of the lower atmospheric pressure at high altitudes, the originally deflated and imperfect object has gradually swelled up and truly looks like a bloated balloon.
It continued to climb higher into the sky.
The curvature of the horizon becomes more and more obvious.
Twenty thousand meters, thirty thousand meters, and finally it stopped at fifty-five thousand meters.
The atmospheric pressure here is only about 0.8% of that on the surface. Here, we have passed through the troposphere and stratosphere of the atmosphere and reached the mesosphere.
This is truly high altitude.
It was at this height that this scientific research equipment began to work.
It began to collect thin air and use the equipment inside to study its composition, and then passed the data to scientific researchers on the surface.
At the same time, its position is not fixed.
Even at such a high altitude, there is always a slight breeze. It drifts with the wind, constantly changing its position and analyzing air samples in different areas.
The scientific expedition team has prepared more than 20 such high-altitude detection balloons.
One after another, huge balloons rose high into the sky, carrying people's expectations.
In another place on the earth, a scientific expedition team came to the site of a nuclear test site.
Numerous nuclear weapons have been detonated here, giving the area a higher background radiation than elsewhere.
Some radioactive isotopes are enriched here and may interact with the atmosphere, causing trace amounts of these substances to enter the atmosphere.
This would not affect any organisms, as there are too few of them, but it could lead to some subtle changes in the sunlight passing through the Earth's atmosphere, which could be used as evidence by some unknown entity deep in the distant stars to confirm the existence of intelligent life on Earth.
Because the abnormal enrichment of radioactive isotopes means the existence of artificial nuclear fission, which obviously means the existence of intelligent civilization.
…
On the ocean, the Ocean Star research vessel is still moving slowly forward.
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