Expansion Bolt (Pressure Cooker 1)

65 million years ago, Venus

Nikola Tesla's so-called method could only be described as a last resort. Dean Abbott couldn't be happy at all. He knew the entire plan seemed theoretically feasible, but the operation would be fraught with difficulties and risks.

Jupiter was constantly approaching, Venus's rotation was slowing, and the Venusians would have nowhere to hide in the Solar System. Although Tesla's plan was high-risk, it still had a chance of success. They couldn't just sit and wait for death.

A core step of the entire plan was to detonate Mars, causing its crust to shatter and ejecting large amounts of debris into space. Nearly a million rocks and ice chunks of various sizes would form a belt structure, blocking the path between Jupiter and Mars, orbiting the Sun. The larger objects could be called asteroids, and this belt structure could also be called the "asteroid belt."

"Nikola, planets, including Mars, were formed from the collision and aggregation of matter on the protoplanetary disk in the early stages of the Solar System's formation. Current theories do not support the so-called detonation of planets," Abbott said.

"Yes, once a planet is formed, it firmly holds onto the surface matter under its own gravity," Tesla replied. "However, if the immense energy of Superluminal waves is introduced into Mars's core, and subjected to repeated thermal expansion and contraction, the situation would be different."

"With the injection of additional energy, disrupting Mars's inherent balance, detonation is possible. I'm not questioning you," Dean Abbott added while calculating in his mind. "We just need to determine the total energy required, the intensity, and the corresponding detonation area and volume."

Nikola Tesla vividly drew an analogy: boiling an egg in water for about 7 minutes would cook it. However, peeling a freshly boiled egg directly was not easy because the shell and the egg white were heated evenly and were almost stuck together.

A clever method was to take the boiled egg out of the boiling water and immediately put it into cold water. The shell would cool rapidly, while the egg inside remained hot, making the shell easier to crack and separate from the egg white.

Dean Abbott's analogy was even more interesting: it was like simmering soup in a clay pot. If a large amount of cold water was suddenly added after the soup had boiled, it could cause the clay pot to crack.

To obtain precise data, Tesla connected to his external brain via a Lightning Ball. The advantage of the external brain lay in memory, search, and logic analysis based on calculation, while the human brain's advantage lay in divergent and expansive thinking, and connecting seemingly unrelated events.

In recent years, Nikola Tesla had consciously trained his external brain, enabling it not only to output precise solutions for mathematical and logical calculations but also to output fuzzy probability solutions based on scenario analysis. In essence, it was about making the external brain more like a human brain.

However, this time, regarding the Mars detonation problem, Tesla wanted the external brain to provide precise data for all aspects. Yet, the external brain kept leading Tesla to think about a technical difficulty rather than other quantifiable data.

The question lingering in Nikola Tesla's mind was that to detonate Mars, it had to be turned into a "pressure cooker." Mars, as a sphere, was composed of multiple layers and could be simplified into a metallic liquid core, a mantle, and a crust.

Energy injection would cause the metallic core to heat up and expand, followed by the mantle and crust. When the energy injection stopped, the crust would cool faster than the mantle and metallic core.

After repeated cycles, the crust would develop multiple cracks and detonate, much like a pressure cooker exploding when the pressure is too high. But there was a prerequisite: the lid of the pressure cooker must be sealed tightly, without any leaks.

"What do you mean by a pressure cooker leaking?" Abbott asked.

"We would choose a crater to build a Superlight Wave Power Station, channeling all the received energy into the underground lava. However, this crater and its surrounding area would act like the pressure release valve of a pressure cooker," Tesla explained.

"After the energy is injected into the core, the metallic lava would erupt from the crater in reverse. The entire Mars would fail to become a high-pressure cooker," Abbott also realized the problem.

Mars had one large and three smaller craters, with the large one located at Olympus Mons. The three smaller ones were lined up in a row, also in the Martian highlands.

Nikola Tesla's goal was to detonate Mars. The previously conceived "vascular" power station plan orbiting Mars was no longer applicable. What needed to be done now was to build a structure 180,000 kilometers high directly above the large crater at the summit of Olympus Mons. The length of this structure would be greater than the wavelength of Superluminal waves, allowing for complete wave incidence and absorption of a large amount of energy.

The absorbed thermal energy would no longer be used for power generation but directly injected into Mars's metallic core. As the metallic core was continuously heated, scorching magma would erupt from the crater. What could be done about this?

Nikola Tesla frowned deeply, and then suddenly had an epiphany, understanding the answer his external brain had been hinting at. He muttered to himself as if talking to himself: "Expansion bolt, expansion bolt."

"What do you mean? Expansion bolt? What does that have to do with detonating Mars?" Abbott asked, confused.

"Our goal is to give Mars's outer shell enough strength to contain the immense pressure generated by the heat of the core. By 'screwing bolts' around the crater, we can solve the problem," Tesla said.

Abbott finally understood the solution provided by Tesla and his external brain. The expansion bolt was clearly a metaphor, not referring to the small, inch-long object screwed into a wall.

Although craters were located on Mars's surface, they were the weakest points of the crust and mantle, directly connecting to the core's magma. To prevent this weak point from prematurely releasing the core's pressure, it needed reinforcement.

There were many ways to reinforce it, such as driving multiple long and deep piles, made of wood or metal, into the ground around the crater.

Dean Abbott immediately thought of another problem: "It's not feasible from an engineering standpoint. Not only do we not have that many long wooden or metal stakes, but even if we did, how many powerful pile drivers would we need?"

Tesla smiled mysteriously and said, "That's why it's called an expansion bolt, not pile driving. We only need drilling machines, not pile drivers, so the engineering difficulty is much smaller."

The answer conceived by the external brain was to drill numerous holes, ten thousand meters deep, in the rock within and around the crater for several hundred kilometers. High-expansion coefficient polymer would be poured into each hole.

These dense polymer columns would expand when heated, greatly increasing the strength of the surrounding rock, thus reinforcing the mountain range for several hundred kilometers around Olympus Mons into a lid of a pressure cooker with extremely high compressive strength.

"The problem of the pressure cooker not leaking is solved. Did the external brain give you any other suggestions?" Abbott asked, recalling the difference between the external brain's and human's thought processes. "Didn't the external brain's previous answer state that the Venusians had no right to exterminate the dinosaurs?"

Tesla admired Abbott's memory and said, "The external brain's thought process is indeed different from humans'. As humans, when the structure of the Solar System and humanity itself are on the brink of destruction, no one would care about dinosaurs. But the external brain has its own logic."

Regarding the dinosaur issue, the external brain guided Tesla's thinking in this way: at its core logic, it had been fed a classic philosophical thought experiment.

Suppose a person could foresee the future. Standing by a railway track, a train is speeding along and will turn right, causing an accident that kills fifty people. If this person were to pull the switch lever, the train would go left, killing one person. Should this person pull the lever?

For this question, different people have their own answers, leading to an ethical and legal dilemma.

For example, if he pulls the lever, is he committing murder against the person who dies? Or can one life be sacrificed to save more people, constituting an act of necessity?

Replacing the person on the left track with a herd of dinosaurs is the choice the external brain is currently facing. The external brain's answer exceeded Nikola Tesla's expectations: it gave the answer: pull the lever, and don't worry about the dinosaurs.

This is because the current situation requires saving not just the fifty people on the right track, but everything – the tracks, the station, the train, and so on.

Law, morality, ethics, and even philosophy itself have prerequisites and boundaries. After humanity's extinction and the collapse of the Solar System, they will become meaningless.

Therefore, for the computer external brain, this so-called moral dilemma has a simple answer, and there is no need to dwell on it.

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Poem of chapter compilation:

Life and death, who knows if it goes against wishes, Ming, Xue Xuan

Originally there was nothing, and nothing to return to. Ming, Wang Ao

In the smooth currents of human relations, joy and sorrow are shallow, Qing, Liu Yi

Old studies of dragon-slaying are already futile. Yuan, Ni Zan