240: Chapter 240: Where Did the Nuclear Explosion on Mars Come From?

As Jiang Zhe finished speaking, the barrage in the livestream chat erupted like a tsunami.

"???"

"Nuclear explosion? Wait, did I hear that right?"

"A nuclear explosion on Mars? Bro, are you serious?"

"A moment ago it was a Mars twin planet explosion, and now we're jumping straight to mushroom clouds?"

"Hold on, my CPU is overheating."

Meanwhile, inside the History Staff Quarters.

Professor Chen Runzhi frowned, "What? A nuclear explosion? On Mars?"

Professor Liu Guangyi narrowed his eyes and drew in a sharp breath, as if struggling to recall something.

"Nuclear explosion, nuclear explosion!" He repeated a few times, then suddenly looked surprised, "Wait, I think I've read a paper somewhere."

Professor Chen Runzhi, Professor Wang Shouren, and Qian Mingyi all turned their heads in unison to stare at him.

"What paper? Don't keep us in suspense!"

Professor Liu Guangyi rested his chin on his hand and shook his head repeatedly, "I don't quite remember. It seems like something from seven or eight years ago, maybe even earlier, a paper about Martian atmospheric isotopes."

He shook his head, looking somewhat annoyed: "It's been too long. It seems to be data from the Mars Viking mission; a paper about xenon isotope anomalies."

Seeing that he really couldn't remember, the three of them shook their heads and turned their gazes back to the big screen.

National Astronomical Observatory.

Director Wang Weiguo's pupils suddenly constricted.

Professor Zhang Qinian's pupils gradually dilated, and his mouth formed an 'O' shape, as if he had realized something.

The other researchers looked at each other, all seeing shock, incredulity, and disbelief on each other's faces!

At this moment, no one spoke to break the silence.

After a long while, Director Wang drew in a sharp breath, "Impossible, impossible, this is impossible!"

"Could it really be that way???"

Director Wang clenched his fists, feeling as if the sky was about to collapse.

Intuition told him it was impossible, but the evidence... he had seen it thirty years ago!!!

Watching the director's expression, Professor Zhang and the researchers all frowned. Yes, for people at a professional astronomical observatory, they all knew what he was referring to; and that answer was too... distant, perhaps even pointing directly to the truth!!!

Inside Principal Fu's office.

Principal Fu, Professor Wang Shouren, Xiao Wang, and Old Yu all turned their gazes onto Ren Xiaoyao.

Ren Xiaoyao couldn't help but swallow hard, "It seems, I remember, I dare not be sure, I'm not sure if that is that!"

Inside Qingfeng Temple.

Zheng Ming stood up abruptly, his face full of an expression that said, "Are you f***ing kidding me?"

"A nuclear explosion, on Mars, what kind of infinite multiverse joke is this?"

"The previous planet explosion wasn't enough, and now you're throwing nuclear weapons at Mars?"

"Is this still normal science popularization? I didn't say anything when you talked about the first observer of the universe before, that was too mystical and impossible to verify."

"Now you're just doing whatever you want? This is clearly fantasy!!!"

Fang Xu didn't speak, looking at the calm Jiang Zhe with a grave expression.

On the big screen, inside the living room.

"Bro, how is that possible? How can that be?" Xiaoyu's face was filled with disbelief, "Mars, how could there be a nuclear explosion on Mars?"

Jiang Zhe grinned and didn't answer, but instead asked an unrelated question, "Xiaoyu, let me ask you something."

"Right now, suppose a secret nuclear explosion occurred somewhere on the globe—for example, the two of us conducted a test in a vast, uninhabited desert, and the power of this test was very small, small enough to only destroy 5 square kilometers."

"Do you think anyone in the world would know by the next day?"

Xiaoyu was stunned, her answer spilling out, "No way, it's so far away, and no one saw it!"

The viewers in the livestream chat also nodded one after another. If a secret experiment were discovered, could it still be called a secret?

But Jiang Zhe shook his head gently, "Yes, they would."

Xiaoyu frowned slightly, "That's impossible, if we experiment in secret, how would foreign countries know?"

Jiang Zhe picked up his tablet and wrote a few words on it: [Xenon-129].

"Do you know what this is?"

Xiaoyu leaned in to take a look and shook her head, "Is it some kind of element?"

Jiang Zhe began to explain: "Xenon-129 is a stable isotope; its abundance in Earth's nature has a fixed ratio, but it has an extremely special source—"

"Which is nuclear fission."

"Whether it's a mushroom cloud explosion or a nuclear power plant in operation, as long as nuclear fission occurs somewhere, a large amount of radioactive Iodine-129 will be generated."

"Iodine-129 will slowly turn into Xenon-129 through beta decay; its half-life is 15.7 million years—not that it all changes at once after 15.7 million years, but that it reduces by half every 15.7 million years."

As he explained this, he wrote a decay chain on the tablet's background board:

Nuclear Fission → Iodine-129 (half-life 15.7 million years) → Beta Decay → Xenon-129 (stable).

"Xenon is an inert gas. Once generated, it will permanently and stably remain in the atmosphere, not reacting with any substance, nor will it settle."

"And the most critical point is—the Xenon-129 in nature and the Xenon-129 produced by nuclear fission have completely different isotope fingerprints."

Jiang Zhe looked at Xiaoyu's confused and curious expression and continued to explain, "Our natural Xenon-129 is mainly left behind by processes like stellar nucleosynthesis and cosmic ray spallation, and its abundance ratio is fixed."

"But the Xenon-129 produced by nuclear fission appears in specific fission yield ratios; it is accompanied by other isotopes like Xenon-131 and Xenon-132, forming a unique ratio spectrum."

"It's like a signature."

"You don't need to understand too much; you just need to understand this concept—that natural Xenon-129 is different from the Xenon-129 from nuclear fission."

Xiaoyu nodded in surprise.

Jiang Zhe nodded slightly, "Therefore, any country, as long as they detonate a mushroom device in any corner of the Earth!"

"Then the next day, any laboratory in the world with atmospheric monitoring capabilities only needs to take a canister of air and use a mass spectrometer to measure the ratio of xenon isotopes!"

"As long as the Xenon-129 isotope is abnormally enriched and matches the fission yield spectrum..."

"Then this is the evidence: ironclad proof, and that country cannot deny it."

"This is why, in the last century, when a certain country conducted a mushroom test, it would be detected by its opponent the same day; not by spies, but by the air."

As the series of explanations finished, Xiaoyu and the viewers all drew in sharp breaths, feeling their thoughts become much clearer.

"Damn, bro knows nuclear physics!!!"

"Holy crap, no wonder!"

"I was just wondering how the USA knew the very next day when the former Bear Country exploded its first mushroom bomb!"

"So it was by f***ing air sampling!"

"Bro, you are truly a walking encyclopedia!"

Xiaoyu was stunned for a few seconds before she recovered from this sudden nuclear physics lesson, but she quickly grasped another question.

"Bro, then, is it possible that it was naturally produced?"

"For example, could some special geological activity on Earth generate this kind of Xenon-129 isotope on its own?"

As soon as she said this, the eyes of countless viewers lit up.

Xenon-129 produced by nuclear fission in nature??

Before they could react, Jiang Zhe picked up his tablet and brought up a picture of a damp cave, "Of course there is!"

"Gabon, Africa, Oklo."

"It was once mistakenly reported by some official hosts without knowledge of nuclear physics as [Ancient Earth Technological Civilization]."

"There is a natural nuclear reactor there. About 2 billion years ago, groundwater seeped into the uranium ore, acting as a moderator, and then caused Uranium-235 to spontaneously undergo chain fission, burning intermittently for hundreds of thousands of years."

"Ah?" Xiaoyu's beautiful eyes widened: "A natural nuclear reactor, does it really exist?"

"Yes." Jiang Zhe nodded gently, "And it also produced Xenon-129 isotopes!"

"But!" His tone suddenly shifted, his expression tightening, "The concentration and ratio are completely different."

He held up a finger, "The Oklo natural reactor was wet. Its fission yield spectrum has subtle and measurable differences from the nuclear explosion spectrum triggered by fast neutrons."

"More importantly, in the geological history environment of billions of years, the xenon gas had long leaked out, migrated, and then re-adsorbed—the remaining nuclear fission fingerprint is very blurred."

"But the Xenon-129 isotopes detected in our Earth's atmosphere are all clean and are all high-concentration fission spectra—caused by mushroom bomb explosions from nuclear-armed countries."

"Therefore, wherever a nuclear fission reaction occurs on Earth, any country with the technology will know by the next day."

Hearing this, Xiaoyu, despite her iron-willed demeanor, couldn't help but sit up straight, her eyebrows furrowed. Reason was telling her that it was impossible for there to have been a nuclear explosion on Mars.

"Bro, even if Earth has them, it doesn't necessarily mean there was a nuclear explosion on Mars, right? What if it was Mars' own?"

As soon as she said this, countless viewers nodded repeatedly.

Zheng Ming also breathed a sigh of relief. As expected of Xiaoyu, she had already mentioned that nature could produce this isotope thing.

Even if Mars had it, it must have been naturally produced.

But Jiang Zhe just curled the corners of his mouth slightly, not explaining anything further, and just gently turned the tablet around, aiming the screen at Xiaoyu.

On it was a research paper report.

[Title: NASA, Viking Mars Landing Mission, Atmospheric Sample Mass Spectrometry Supplementary Report.]

[Date: 1976.]

[Key Data: Abnormally high concentrations of Xenon-129 were detected in the Martian atmosphere. Its isotope abundance pattern is significantly different from Earth's atmosphere and highly consistent with the nuclear fission yield fingerprint.]

[Conclusion: Unknown!]