Chapter 142: Large Low Shear Wave Velocity Province
Professor Lu Zhaoming’s words caused the thousands of attendees in the meeting room to fall into silence.
The intelligence currently held by our side is not much, only a scant few pieces.
First, the locations of the Hibernation Base and the Doomsday Base from the previous cycle; second, the apocalypse sufficient to cause the extinction of human civilization.
Combining these two factors, the final answer is self-evident.
A severe earthquake covering the entire Earth, with full coverage and no blind spots.
Only this can explain the existing two pieces of intelligence.
Why did bases clearly located at geologically stable zones ultimately get destroyed?
Because it was a severe earthquake covering the globe.
Why did human civilization go extinct?
Similarly, because it was a severe earthquake covering the globe.
This is the speculation with the highest possibility based on the current conditions.
Of course, no matter how intense this earthquake is, it would not affect people in space and on the Moon—current estimates put the number of humans in these two places at around thousands.
But the survival of these thousands does not affect the judgment of extinction of human civilization, just like during the first apocalypse, when he and astronauts like Tong Zheng temporarily survived on the Moon, it still did not affect the extinction judgment.
Because it is not sustainable. Without the support of humans on Earth, the outcome of their eventual death is already doomed.
Thus, an extremely severe earthquake spreading across the globe ultimately causing the extinction of human civilization is logically reasonable.
However… is such an earthquake really reasonable from a physics perspective?
Jiang Yang’s brain was racing. The knowledge from those repeated cycles in the past, repeated hibernations, and ten years of uninterrupted study before hibernation—though not cutting-edge or rigorous—provided sufficient breadth in science, allowing him now to make some judgments.
He knew that under normal circumstances, the cause of earthquakes is the stress release of Earth’s rock plates.
Just like a board fixed on a tabletop with one side protruding.
As heavy objects are continuously placed on the part of the board protruding from the tabletop, it will keep bending. Until the weight exceeds the limit, it snaps with a crack.
The previous bending is the stress accumulation process. The final snap is the stress release process.
The same applies to continental plates on Earth. The rocks composing the continental plates are also constantly moving, either subducting under other plates or squeezing against each other. This process also distorts the plates and accumulates stress.
Until it exceeds the limit, the rocks fracture, and the earthquake occurs.
This is the most common type of earthquake on Earth by number. Others, like volcanic eruption earthquakes and cavity collapse earthquakes, are not discussed here.
But even with Jiang Yang’s not particularly deep knowledge accumulation, he knew that a severe earthquake spreading across the globe could not possibly be caused by conventional plate movement.
It makes sense for a board to break under heavy objects, but for a board to shatter into sawdust in a short time—could that also be caused by heavy objects?
So… what caused this severe earthquake that spread across the globe, unavoidable even in geologically stable zones in geology?
Of course, the final mastermind behind the scenes is almost certainly the Reaper Civilization. But the key question now is, through what method did the Reaper Civilization trigger this earthquake?
Only by clarifying this process can our side possibly find a way to respond to the apocalypse. Just like in the first apocalypse, where our side completed the mission of confronting the apocalypse by destroying that underground floating city.
Facing Professor Lu Zhaoming’s question, the gazes of all attendees converged on the experts in geology, geophysics, and solid-state physics-related fields.
The leading expert in the field was silent for a moment, then said: “We need to discuss it.”
“Adjourn the meeting for one hour temporarily.”
The attendees left the network meeting room, each preoccupied with their own thoughts.
One hour later, people’s figures reappeared.
After one hour of discussion, that leading expert clearly had some judgments in mind.
“After eliminating the possibility of conventional continental plate movement, we have, through discussion, two aspects of speculation.
First, extraterrestrial causes.
Based on the current level of science, we can divide this cause into three possibilities.
First is the first one: asteroid impact.
A sufficiently massive asteroid with sufficient speed suddenly impacting Earth could indeed release enough energy to trigger a global severe earthquake.
According to our rough estimate, a severe earthquake spreading across the globe corresponds to a total energy release of approximately 3*10^24 joules.
The energy released by one ton of TNT explosives is about 4.184*10^9 joules, which is equivalent to the energy of 720 trillion tons of TNT exploding simultaneously, over 1000 times the total yield of nuclear weapons currently possessed by human civilization.
And to release this much energy, an asteroid about 30 kilometers in diameter and around 15 trillion tons in mass impacting at 20 kilometers per second would suffice.
The second possibility is tidal gravity from a massive celestial body.
Suppose a massive celestial body approaches Earth—its mass doesn’t need to be too large, just on the scale of Jupiter or Saturn; if it gets close enough to Earth, it would suffice to trigger large-scale material movement globally, completely enough to cause this world-destroying global earthquake.
The third possibility is influences based on certain principles unknown to us, such as conjectured high-energy radiation or some effects based on dark matter.
Because the level of basic physics theory is insufficient, we cannot make judgments of sufficient value in this aspect.”
Jiang Yang pressed the speak button.
“I think the possibility of extraterrestrial causes is low.
In the previous cycle, after I brought the apocalypse warning, we conducted a comprehensive investigation of possible threats, including extraterrestrial factors.
We carried out large-scale asteroid searches, but until the apocalypse finally arrived, we did not discover any asteroids approaching that posed sufficient threat to us.
And if there were no asteroids, let alone massive celestial bodies, which are far more conspicuous than asteroids; if they approached, we couldn’t possibly fail to detect them.”
That expert nodded: “Since extraterrestrial factors are eliminated, we can focus solely on factors from Earth itself.
According to our discussion, combined with existing research results in geophysics and geology, we believe there are mainly the following four possibilities.
First, Super Mantle Plume.
Earth is divided from outside to inside into crust, mantle, and Earth’s core.
The extreme high temperature and pressure inside Earth mainly dissipate heat through mantle convection.
And at the mantle-Earth core boundary corresponding to the surface areas of Africa and under the Pacific, modern Earth science research has confirmed the existence of two huge anomalous high-density high-temperature regions there, called large low shear wave velocity provinces.
From the tops of these two anomalous regions, through a series of mechanisms, it is possible to cause multiple huge high-temperature high-pressure mantle plumes to rise, directly penetrating the mantle and acting on the crust.
In simple analogy, it is like a jack, rising from inside Earth, directly ‘jacking apart’ the continental plate, ultimately forming a widespread severe earthquake affecting the globe.”
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