There was a huge crater below Wilkes Land. Li Du, of course, did not know that. He paid little attention to Antarctica and had not studied the geography and geology of Antarctica.
Elson went to prepare dinner, and Steve sat them down and began to talk about the purpose of their trip to Antarctica.
As he said, he was looking for meteorites. There were many pictures of meteorites hanging in the house, and he took some and put them on the table for Li Du to see.
The Wilkes Crater was discovered half a century ago, just below the ice sheet of Wilkes Land. It was a large impact crater.
The crater was very large. After modern measurements, it was thought to have a diameter of 243 kilometers and a depth of 848 meters.
In addition to the crater, there may also be a mass tumor in Wilkes Land.
A mass tumor, as the name suggests, is a tumor with a particularly large mass. It exists inside a planet and is an aggregate denser than the surrounding geology.
Humans have found mass tumors on the moon and Mars. According to aerospace research, they are the result of asteroid impacts.
A mass tumor previously found on Earth was in Hawaii, but scientific research showed that it was caused by a volcanic eruption, not an asteroid impact.
It was not until later that NASA's gravity measurement and climate monitoring satellites discovered the mass tumor in Wilkes Land, which was larger than the crater and about 300 kilometers in diameter!
There were no large volcanoes in this area of Antarctica, which ruled out that it was also formed by a volcanic eruption. In this way, the cause of the mass tumor's formation was simple:
It was the result of an asteroid impact!
"According to the study of air echo acoustics, there is a gravitational anomaly at the lower end of the crater and in the mass tumor, and a large number of glass meteorites. The glass meteorites that are now widely scattered on the Australian continent came from here," Steve explained to him.
Li Du asked, "What does this mean?"
Steve said, "It means a lot. First of all, it means that there are a lot of meteorites here. We are looking for these alien meteorites."
Li Du laughed. "Oh, you want to be a meteorite hunter, don't you?"
Like the art hunters he had met in Miami before, meteorite hunters were professionals looking for meteorites.
As everyone knew, meteorites had always been rare, even rarer than gold and diamonds. There were less than 300 pieces collected in the entire world.
The rarer something is, the more valuable it is. Moreover, meteorites have scientific research value that ordinary collections do not have. Therefore, the collection of meteorites has always been an important work carried out by various countries. Through the meteorites on Earth, it is of great scientific value to understand the age of Earth and the evolution of Earth.
Most of the collection work was not done by people, but by the government.
There was competition between governments, and each country's government was rich, so the price of meteorites had always been high.
When Li Du was learning about the world's luxury goods market, he noticed the meteorite market.
Meteorites weren't often seen in auctions, but as long as they appeared, they would always be the main characters.
In 1993, Sotheby's auctioned off a lunar meteorite at a price of 442,500 US dollars. Its mass was only 0.33 grams!
In May 1998, the Phillips Auction House in New York auctioned off a Mars meteorite for 3.36 million US dollars. Its mass was even smaller, only 0.28 grams!
Now that humans had been able to land on the moon and Mars, it stood to reason that they could bring back stones from these two planets. The meteorites on the moon and Mars that fell on Earth should not be expensive.
That was not the case. First of all, only a few countries on the United Nations' permanent council could land on the moon. Second, only the American probes could land on Mars.
It was very difficult for the probes to transport the ores back, and the price was very high. The money spent was even more than the ores that naturally fell on Earth at the auction.
The US government even used the ore brought back from Mars as a diplomatic tool. Other governments had to pay a high price to get their ore.
Not long ago, Christie's Paris held a "natural history" auction in the autumn. At the auction, there was a 43-centimeter-long, 45-kilogram meteorite. It was sold for 78.25 million euros, a very high price!
Steve laughed at Li Du's words and said, "All of us Tussenbergs are meteorite hunters. We can all be called meteorite hunters, but I don't think so. I'm looking for meteorites for other purposes, not for profit."
"Then why?" Li Du asked subconsciously.
Steve was silent. Obviously, he did not want to say the answer.
Sophie secretly tugged at Li Du and changed the subject. "Are you going to look for meteorites in the crater here? As far as I know, the Wilkes crater is under the ice sheet and can't be excavated, right? "
Steve nodded and said regretfully, "Yes, the ice sheet is too hard and thick. Current technology cannot penetrate hundreds of meters and sample from it."
"My idea here is to look around the crater and see if I can find meteorites that sputtered on the surface. Or, like Li digs for opal, I can dig on the shallow surface and look for meteorites. "
Li Du suddenly understood. "Oh, you went with me to dig for opal, just to prepare for this?"
"For this. After all, because of my health, I have not been exposed to such work," Steve laughed.
Li Du said, "I have a knack for finding ore. If you think I can help, you can ask. I can't offer, because, you know, I don't want you to feel like I'm invading your privacy. "
Hearing this, Steve laughed helplessly.
He rubbed his hands together and said, "Li, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to keep anything secret from you. I just think you might not believe what I say."
"If you think I can know, then you can tell me. I trust you very much," Li Du said.
Steve said, "Well, I'll tell you first. According to research in geology, topography, and other aspects, if the crater and mass tumor in Wilkes Land were caused by a meteorite impact, then the diameter of the meteorite should be 40 to 50 kilometers."
"You know what? The meteorite that caused the Chicxulub crater was only 10 kilometers in diameter. "
The Chicxulub crater was a crater impact site found in Yucatán, Mexico, or the Yucatan Peninsula, and was currently the largest crater on Earth.
The impact was thought to be the main cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. After the impact, the asteroid completely evaporated, releasing up to 5.0 × 10 ^ 23 joules of energy, equivalent to 120 trillion tons of TNT, triggering a tsunami and sending a large amount of dust into the atmosphere, completely obscuring the sun, changing the global climate, and causing a nuclear winter.
Many people might not understand this, but simply put, the impact led to the end of the dinosaur era. For a long time, people speculated that the dinosaurs that once ruled the earth were wiped out by this meteorite!
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