Chapter 187 Full of Troubles
Xiao Peng finally understood one thing: salvaging a batch of rhodium is almost the same as salvaging a batch of ancestors.
He had indeed made a fortune. This batch of rhodium was indeed verified to be of high purity, but how could he cash it in? It was incredibly difficult!
France, as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations and a recognized major power, how much rhodium do they have in their national reserves? Less than three tons! And how much rhodium does Xiao Peng have now? 8,000 ounces, or 226 kilograms!
The highest annual rhodium production on the entire earth is only 750,000 ounces. Xiao Peng's 8,000 ounces is equivalent to 1% of the annual production of the entire earth!
Italy, upon learning of the existence of this batch of rhodium, also wanted a piece of the action. Other major countries, upon learning of its existence, also became interested. Even China showed interest and sent representatives to negotiate with Xiao Peng.
After all, China is a country with scarce platinum resources, and rhodium is extracted from platinum ores through refining. Even though China's industry is so developed now, 8,000 ounces is almost one-tenth of China's annual industrial demand!
That’s a huge number!
Xiao Peng is now full of "happy troubles".
Besides that, there were many other 'bad things' bothering him.
For example, the policewoman, Esther Lyle, had a surprising impact on Xiao Peng: she came from a wealthy family and had become a police officer out of personal interest. The 70,000 yuan compensation was nothing to her, and she quickly paid it to Xiao Peng. But what happened next was more difficult.
Eastler applied for a job transfer and came to La Ciotat to work as a policeman, and his purpose was to become Xiao Peng's apprentice!
What did Xiao Peng teach her? The octopus's hunting speed and strength?
This girl is also very stubborn. She blocks Xiao Peng's door every day, which makes Xiao Peng very annoyed.
She was not the one who bothered Xiao Peng the most. The one who bothered Xiao Peng the most was Chen Zetao.
Chen Zetao came to plead for Hu Guohui and Xu Xingde every day.
The seabed samples that Duan Bo brought back this time drove the two of them crazy.
For example, the biological samples that Duan Bo brought back this time shocked Hu Guohui.
The basic characteristics of deep-sea creatures are that they are "big" and "weird".
For example, this time we brought back a kind of "tube worm" that had never been seen before. It should be an unknown species of tunicate.
Tunicates are a very common chordate in the ocean and are also the oldest chordate. There are more than a thousand known tunicates in the world. For example, the 'sea eggplant' commonly seen on the coast of China is a type of tunicate.
The tunicate is a very interesting creature. The young tunicate swims around like a tadpole. Once it finds a place to settle down, it will stay there and stop moving and start growing. When it grows up, the tunicate looks more like a plant and survives by filtering microorganisms.
When juvenile, tunicates are standard chordates, with a well-developed notochord, the front end of the neural tube, and brain vesicles containing various nerve organs. However, after adulthood, the notochord will atrophy, and all sensory organs and nerve organs will degenerate, leaving only a ganglion.
But later scientists discovered that these organs of the sea squirts were not naturally degenerated, but were eaten by themselves. Their own intestines absorbed the organs and tissues of their own childhood bodies. It is definitely a tough one!
Most sea squirts aren't very large, but the one found near the hot springs was a meter long! Duan Bo also brought back two clam-like creatures. They looked more like river clams, pure white and about the size of a palm. But upon opening them, it was discovered that their internal structure was completely different from that of clams! They had no feeding system, no intestines, and no digestive system. Their entire bodies were taken over by unknown bacteria, which absorbed the sulfur compounds in the hot springs and then chemically synthesized them, allowing the clams to grow!
Such strange phenomena cannot be seen in textbooks; they are completely beyond human cognition!
Humans know very little about the ocean, but science is like a flashlight. Just because you can't shine it doesn't mean there's nothing there!
Unfortunately, due to the lack of formaldehyde, these marine organisms could not be preserved, and by the time they were displayed in front of Hu Guohui, they were completely unrecognizable. Hu Guohui couldn't wait to go back and participate in the investigation of the hot spring with his own eyes.
But the one who was more anxious than him was Xu Xingde.
Based on the mineral samples brought back by Duan Bo, Xu Xingde came to the conclusion that the place where Xiao Peng and his team discovered the shipwreck was an active volcano crater with a long history.
Active submarine volcanoes are actually quite common. There are at least 20,000 active volcanoes beneath Earth's oceans, most of which are in the Pacific. Many islands in the ocean are the remains of underwater volcanic eruptions, such as Surtsey and Iwo Jima.
There are also numerous active volcanoes in the Mediterranean Sea. For example, the Marsili volcano southwest of Naples, Italy, located in the Tyrrhenian Sea, is a prime example. It stands approximately 3,000 meters tall, 70 kilometers long and 30 kilometers wide, a typical large volcano with a crater 450 meters below the seafloor. While no eruption has been recorded, an eruption could potentially devastate the entire Mediterranean.
It is absolutely spectacular to go to the seabed over there. The temperature of the nearby sea water exceeds 100 degrees. Magma is constantly pouring out of the crater and spreading around. Then it slowly cools down, making the area of the volcano larger and larger.
What's interesting is that despite the boiling seawater and surging magma, there's no noticeable change on the surface. The seawater absorbs the heat from the magma, causing it to slowly cool.
If there were no oceans on Earth, there would be no life. The oceans absorb a large amount of heat from the sun, making the Earth habitable. If there were no oceans on Earth? Then the Earth would become almost exactly like Mars!
Xu Xingde's inference is that there should be a small-scale active volcano under the hot spring discovered by Xiao Peng. Because the scale is not that large, the hot spring was produced.
This hot spring will grow, and the minerals ejected will become a "chimney" that will grow about 70 meters or even higher every year. When it reaches a certain height, the "chimney" will collapse and a new "chimney" will appear, and the minerals on the ground will accumulate and become thicker.
According to the hot spring mineral samples they brought back, there is a large zinc-silver mine there! And it is less than a thousand meters from sea level, which greatly reduces the difficulty of mining.
But the problem now is that we don’t know how far this mineral layer is from the crater and how much possibility there is for mining!
But Xiao Peng has no intention of going out to sea at all. He has more busy things to do now: these messy things have made Xiao Peng busy and exhausted.
What’s even more infuriating is that Patachi and Fernandez have already completed the procedures for going to the reserve, and they urge Xiao Peng to find the S-80 every day.
Well, let’s finish the work first!
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