Mass Tumor 2: Bulldozer

July 2029, Sazhou, Rocket City, Liang Nation

Acebe Space Technology Company, led by Michael Max, possesses the world's largest caliber heavy-lift rocket, the Hunter-5 Rocket. It has a diameter of 50 meters, a payload capacity exceeding one hundred tons, and the most astonishing feature is that it is recoverable and reusable.

Acebe Company seemed to have opened a door for humanity to the stars, and commercial orders poured in.

The annual Acebe Company Customer Appreciation Party was underway. Michael became the center of attention the moment he appeared, and his highly motivational speech pushed the enthusiasm of the guests to its peak.

A cold buffet dinner began, and guests mingled in small groups, holding their drinks and chatting.

The Bright Country Space Administration was naturally Acebe Company's most important partner. Professor Braun and his daughter, Daphne Braun, were among the invited guests. Michael walked over to the father and daughter with a smile. After greeting the professor, he said to Daphne:

"Today's clients are very interesting. I'll introduce you to them in a bit."

"Michael, congratulations! The Hunter-5's reusability experiment was a success, that's truly amazing!" Daphne beamed, then asked Michael, "My explorer, is the next stop the Moon or Mars?"

"It seems I can no longer make a difference on Earth," Michael said meaningfully, glancing at Professor Braun. He then lowered his voice mysteriously, "I'll just have to fulfill the other half of my dream and go to Mars."

Daphne secretly rejoiced. Since she joined the Bright Country Space Administration's Lingshen Star exploration project, her main research focus had been Mars and the asteroid belt.

Daphne's doctoral dissertation was titled "The Development and Regulation of the Space Industry." The so-called space industry was nothing more than humanity making better use of space resources. From the perspective of engineering difficulty and cost savings, the feasibility of developing and utilizing the asteroid belt was even higher than that of the Moon.

Michael took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter's tray and led Daphne and the professor to the interesting clients he had mentioned. "This is Mr. Masao Asagaya, President of Kyojima Company from Fusheng Nation. His collaboration with our company is very interesting."

After introductions and pleasantries, Daphne and her father learned about Kyojima Company's highly creative project proposal.

Kyojima Company was a well-known construction engineering firm in Fusheng Nation. Since 2009, they had begun developing intelligent engineering machinery.

With the significant increase in AI computing power, remotely controlled intelligent machinery had made leaps and bounds in progress.

By 2020, Kyojima Company undertook a dam construction project in Fusheng Nation. The dam's construction was entirely done using remotely controlled AI equipment. Excavators and bulldozers worked collaboratively on the site 24 hours a day without interruption.

Kyojima Company set a world record by building the first large-scale structure constructed entirely without human presence on-site.

Starting in 2021, Kyojima Company collaborated with research institutions in Fusheng Nation to achieve ultra-long-range remote control and engineering coordination for AI intelligent machinery, with a control distance of an astonishing nearly ten thousand kilometers.

For telecommunication signals and remote control, ten thousand kilometers and 380,000 kilometers presented no technical difference. The astute Daphne immediately grasped the interesting aspect Michael had mentioned, and she exclaimed:

"Mr. President, are you planning to commission Michael to send AI excavators and bulldozers to the Moon to mine?"

Masao Asagaya looked at the wise lady who had seen through his plan and smiled with pride.

Daphne Braun recalled her own thesis and felt a flicker of concern.

The Moon's surface was rich in rare metals, and transporting them back to Earth held immense economic value. Its loose surface soil made excavation and sorting costs significantly lower than on Earth. Therefore, even after paying Acebe Company exorbitant transportation fees, Kyojima Company could still achieve unimaginable profits.

This was precisely Daphne's dilemma. Humanity would eventually utilize space resources, but how should it be done? What rules should govern commercial development?

Daphne understood that it would be very difficult to persuade the president in front of her to postpone development plans given her position. Yet, she couldn't help but engage in a deep conversation with President Asagaya.

Michael gestured for the professor to move to a quiet corner and said to him:

"I've signed a non-disclosure agreement. Daphne doesn't know the secret of Tesla's theory yet, does she?" After the professor nodded in confirmation, Michael continued, "Can you tell me about the lunar experiment related to Tesla's theory that you mentioned to me last time?"

The professor began to recount the lunar experiment he had designed.

In 1936, Nikola Tesla submitted his paper "The Dynamic Principle of Gravity." In addition to the Superluminal Wave Hypothesis, which had already been verified, he proposed a new theory of gravity.

Whether it was Newton's classical theory of gravitational mass or Einstein's general relativity, both were derived from observing the phenomena of object motion in space.

An object moving at a constant velocity in an inertial frame experiences acceleration towards the center of gravity in a gravitational field.

Nikola Tesla redefined inertial frames and gravitational fields. He believed that all forms of motion originated from the distribution of energy density.

A uniform distribution of energy density in the environment constituted an inertial frame. If there existed a "gravitational source" with high energy density, the energy distribution in its surrounding area would become non-uniform, spreading outwards spherically. The energy intensity would decrease with the square of the distance.

Whether in an inertial frame or a gravitational field, the law of motion for an object is: during motion, the environmental energy density remains constant, maintaining uniform velocity; from a region of lower environmental density to a region of higher density, the object accelerates; conversely, it decelerates.

Tesla's theory of gravity can be summarized in one sentence: the motion of an object is caused by the non-uniform distribution of energy density in its environment. The object approaches and maintains itself on an equipotential energy density line, where energy absorption and emission are balanced.

More abstractly, the motion of an object is a mapping of the environmental energy density distribution.

For an object to maintain uniform motion, its trajectory must be an equipotential energy density line, which could be a straight inertial motion, circular motion, or orbital motion in a gravitational field.

For an object undergoing accelerated motion, its trajectory must traverse different energy density lines. The gradient vector of the energy density line determines the direction and magnitude of the acceleration.

A child's bouncing ball, an apple falling to the ground, a rocket launching into the sky, the energy level transitions of electrons, and the Earth's orbit around the Sun all follow these principles.

Michael blinked, looking at the professor in astonishment, and said, "Tesla believed that gravity is not emitted by mass, nor is it caused by the curvature of spacetime, but rather a phenomenon arising from non-uniform energy density. This would overturn physics!"

The professor nodded deeply and said, "I also find Tesla's theory of gravity unbelievable, utterly absurd. For this reason, I designed an experiment."

In 1968, the Bright Country Space Administration's lunar exploration project was in full swing. Scientists discovered that the actual orbits of small spacecraft skimming low over the Moon's surface did not match their calculated orbits. Without manual adjustments, the spacecraft would crash onto the lunar surface.

In 1972, after the Apollo 16 mission concluded, astronauts released a small lunar orbiter. The orbiter's trajectory fluctuated, showing that the Moon's gravitational pull was extremely uneven, until it eventually crashed.

Decades of observation and calculation revealed the mystery: the gravitational acceleration distribution on the Moon's surface was uneven. Contrary to common sense, gravity was lower at lunar mountain peaks than the average, while it was higher in the low-lying areas.

Scientists provided an explanation: these lunar depressions are called lunar maria, formed by asteroid impact events. After the impact created deep valleys, the Moon's mantle beneath the surface rebounded and bulged due to the impact, increasing the mass in the inner layers beneath the impact site. Scientists figuratively called this mass anomaly a "mass tumor."

The largest mass tumor on the Moon was located at the southeastern edge of an impact crater called the Sea of Rains. The Sea of Rains depression was very deep, reaching 6 kilometers below the Moon's reference datum.

"Michael, if we use a large amount of material, such as the space debris filling near-Earth space, to fill this 6-kilometer deep hole in the Sea of Rains, do you think the gravity would increase or decrease?" the professor asked.

"It would naturally increase. According to scientists, there's already a mass tumor beneath the Sea of Rains. Adding extra filled material would certainly increase the gravity in that region," Michael replied, looking at the professor with curiosity, finding this method of space debris disposal quite interesting.

"No matter how absurd Tesla's theory of gravity may seem, we must admit it is a scientific hypothesis because it can be falsified. Of course, it could also be proven true," the professor replied.

Professor Braun designed the "mass tumor" experiment based on Nikola Tesla's theory of gravity: if, after filling the Sea of Rains, gravity did not increase but returned to normal, or even became less than what the so-called mass tumor caused, it would be inexplicable by any existing gravitational theory and would serve as definitive proof of Tesla's theory of gravity.

The professor regretfully told Michael that while his experiment design was good, turning the Moon into a human space junk landfill would spark enormous environmental ethics controversy, and thus the experimental plan was shelved.

The astute Michael seemed to understand, saying to Professor Braun, "Are you planning to borrow Kyojima Company's bulldozer to fill in that corner of the Sea of Rains?"

The professor also smiled and said, "Yes, the bulldozer."

Poem of Collected Chapters and Sentences:

How is it different from looking at the Moon, Tang, Su Ding Waxing and waning, riding both ends. Yuan, Liu Shen Only then did I know below the rocky valleys, Ming, Yan Zhengju Tonight it will be imprinted round. Song, Shi Jian