65 million years ago, Victoria Wetlands, Earth
Venusian technology was advanced, and they had been exploring space for over a century. Tens of thousands of satellites, probes, and spacecraft traveled between Venus, Earth, and Mars.
A side effect of space activity had emerged: space junk drifted everywhere, threatening the safety of shipping lanes and even occasionally falling onto planets, causing loss of life and property.
Recovering space junk was time-consuming and labor-intensive, so the Venus Alliance decided that Earth's "cleanup crew," stationed midway along the routes, would handle this troublesome task.
The "cleanup crew" mainly consisted of a space elevator in the Victoria Wetlands and specialized junk-collecting spacecraft in low orbit. As for the personnel, they were, of course, hardened criminals exiled to Earth and clones created by Maria.
The Victoria Wetlands on Earth had thus become the Venusian space-junk landfill.
Maria had thought that after Tesla had said goodbye to her and returned to Venus a few days earlier, work there would keep him occupied, and they might not see each other again for a long time.
To Maria's surprise and delight, only a few days later, Nikola Tesla had returned to Earth and was standing before her once more. The director of the Venus Academy of Sciences, Abbott, had come with him.
After the three of them had dinner together, they sat around the table.
Abbott asked, "Nikola, our mission this time can only succeed; it cannot fail. Time is short, yet you brought me all the way to Earth. You can tell me why now, can't you?"
Tesla gently took Maria's hand and said, "Maria, you're cut off from the world in this place of exile. Unfortunately, Venus has encountered a tremendous crisis. Abbott and I have been ordered to devise a plan for the safe evacuation of the Venusians."
Tesla turned to Abbott and said, "If the Venusians have to evacuate Venus, the only habitable planets are Earth and Mars. Earth is naturally the first place we need to investigate."
Nikola Tesla explained his thinking to Abbott and Maria, who was staring at him in shock. "Venus has a population of over six billion. Moving everyone to other planets is almost impossible. The challenges are immense, and there are countless complicated factors to consider."
Tesla analyzed and assessed the various data and plans compiled by the Venus Academy of Sciences. Using the Lightning Ball to connect with its external brain, he had formed a plan.
There were only three planets in the Solar System's habitable zone: Venus, Earth, and Mars.
Tesla's migration plan was "one primary, one backup, one wait." In other words, they would transform Mars into the primary destination for migration, keep Earth as a backup, and wait long enough for Venus's natural environment to recover so that the Venusians could eventually return to the planet they knew and were best adapted to.
"According to the plan I worked out with the Academy's experts, Earth is the first choice. Why would you choose Mars?"
"Earth does have a lot in common with Venus, so it seems like the obvious first choice. Before I explain my reasons, let me tell you why the Lightning Ball external brain ruled Earth out."
Tesla gave Maria a meaningful look, then continued, "The underlying values of Artificial Intelligence Large Models are set by us humans. So its reason for ruling out Earth was that humanity has no right to drive the dinosaurs to extinction."
Of course, Tesla's reasons went beyond ethics. Earth did have a lot in common with Venus. For example, their radii and densities were similar, and the difference in surface gravitational acceleration was small. Earth's oxygen concentration was 28%, slightly higher than Venus's 21%, but that was not necessarily a bad thing.
However, Earth's tectonic plates barely moved, leaving it with almost no high mountains. That meant it had no long rivers or expansive alluvial plains. How could a planet unsuitable for agriculture and animal husbandry be called habitable?
"My plan is to use the Superlight Wave Power Station to inject energy into Earth's interior and intensify tectonic activity, creating great mountains and rivers. Before that, we Venusians will go to Mars."
Abbott immediately thought of how the Superlight Wave Power Station had raised the ground on Tower Island by 3,000 meters, causing a massive retreat of the sea.
He slapped his thigh and exclaimed, "Brilliant! We can start transforming Earth now and move the Venusians to Mars. Once Earth's terrain is habitable, we can move there."
"Abbott, don't forget that Mars isn't an ideal place ready for us to move into, either. The Venusians can't just 'move in with their bags.'"
Abbott calmed down and said, "That's right. Setting aside Mars's low temperatures, the biggest challenge is that its gravity is only one-third of Venus's. That will be the hardest thing for the Venusians to adapt to. If only we could increase Mars's gravity."
Inspired by Tesla, Abbott finally voiced, almost jokingly, the utterly absurd idea:
How could Mars's surface gravitational acceleration be greatly increased without changing its mass?
Ninety years earlier, Nikola Tesla had submitted his paper Dynamic Principle of Gravity, in which he proposed the Superluminal Wave Hypothesis, later confirmed by experiments.
Tesla understood gravity differently. After working through the equations, he found that in the same gravitational field, the force of gravity on an object was proportional to the intensity of the energy it displaced, while centripetal acceleration was proportional to the gravitational field constant multiplied by the energy intensity at a given distance.
What about different gravitational fields? By studying the mass-luminosity relationships of thousands of stars, he found that the linear relationship between mass and luminosity differed from star to star. Cool red stars had longer peak radiation wavelengths and a relatively higher mass-to-luminosity ratio, while hot blue stars showed the opposite pattern.
Did a longer peak wavelength from a gravitational source—a star—mean relatively greater gravity?
Tesla concluded that in any gravitational field, the force of gravity on an object depended on the gravitational source's peak radiation wavelength and the energy intensity at the object's location.
Make bold assumptions, test them carefully, allow them to be disproven, and ensure they could make predictions.
Nikola Tesla studied a map of the Moon's surface gravity. The gravity over mountain peaks was anomalously low, below the average; that over lowlands was anomalously high. Wasn't that the opposite of what common sense would suggest?
The Moon was a radiation source, reflecting sunlight. Wavelengths were short over its peaks and long over its lowlands.
The peaks were hotter, with shorter wavelengths and relatively weaker gravity, while the lowlands were cooler, with longer wavelengths and relatively stronger gravity. The Moon's surface-gravity map could be perfectly overlaid on its infrared thermal image! So what gravity anomaly was there?
To verify what gravity really was, Nikola Tesla designed an experiment he called the Moon "Mass Tumor" experiment.
"Mass Tumor? I'm a biologist, so how come I've never heard of this disease?" Maria asked.
"It isn't a real tumor, just a metaphor for the gravity anomalies on the Moon's surface," Abbott explained before Tesla could.
A lunar gravity probe launched by Venusian astronomers had orbited ten kilometers above the Moon's surface and mapped its gravity in full.
"The Moon's gravity isn't distributed evenly. Which do you think exerts greater gravity: the mountainous regions or the lowlands, also called the lunar seas?" Tesla asked Maria with a smile.
"Surely the mountains exert more gravity than the lowlands, because there's more rock there!" Maria answered without hesitation.
With great interest, Tesla explained to Maria that the Moon's surface gravity was exactly the opposite of what common sense suggested: gravity at the mountain peaks was below average, while gravity in the lowlands—the lunar seas—was above average.
Scientists believed there was only one reasonable explanation for this anomaly: dense metal masses lay beneath the lunar seas. The scientific community called them "Mass Tumors."
Nikola Tesla disagreed. He believed that as a source of gravity, the Moon's gravity depended not on its mass but on the intensity of the energy it emitted and its peak radiation wavelength.
All the energy emitted by the Moon came from reflected solar radiation. The Moon rotated slowly relative to the Sun, with a period of 27.32 days, and its surface temperature varied greatly. The peaks were hot and emitted short-wavelength radiation, while the lowlands—the lunar seas—were the opposite.
"Maria, if we filled in a lunar sea with a six-kilometer-deep hole—in other words, artificially increased its mass—would gravity in that region become stronger or weaker?" Tesla presented his experimental proposal.
"The lunar sea already has a Mass Tumor underground. Add even more mass, and gravity could only become stronger," Maria said.
Tesla predicted that filling in the lunar sea would not increase gravity in the region. Instead, gravity would become even weaker than before, and the gravity anomaly in the lunar sea would return to normal. The "Mass Tumor" would mysteriously vanish altogether!
That was because gravity was not caused by mass; it was determined by energy intensity and peak radiation wavelength. Once the lunar sea was filled in, its temperature would rise, the radiation it emitted would have a correspondingly shorter wavelength, and gravity would weaken. The anomaly would disappear.
Abbott already knew about Tesla's experiment. He asked doubtfully,
"Nikola, what material are you planning to use to fill in the lunar sea?"
Nikola Tesla pointed up into the air, then meaningfully toward the heaps of space junk in the distance. With confidence, he said,
"Space junk!"
Abbott and Maria cried out almost simultaneously,
"You're going to turn the lunar sea into a new space-junk landfill?"
A poem pieced together from lines:
Moonlit path, high and low, by Qian Chengzhi, Ming Dynasty
Dust brushed away, an old inscription found. By Lin Jizhong, Song Dynasty
Not led astray by worldly things. By Hongli, Qing Dynasty
Often I reach the road, yet lose my way again. By Tian Wen, Qing Dynasty
Before you continue