Dead on Mars

Chapter 177 - Sol Three Hundred and Twenty, Tomorrow’s Tang Yue Will Still Rise As Usual
The comet had gone.

Tang Yue packed up as he prepared to head home.

“We really have a second chance in life.” Tang Yue and Tomcat walked alongside each other, strolling through the desert. Above their heads was a sky filled with shooting stars. They were the large number of tiny ice crystals that Comet Tomcat-Tang-Mai I had sent into the atmosphere. “A six was thrown at the most critical moment.”

“If there is a god in this world, what do you think it’s currently doing?” Tang Yue asked.

“It might be stroking a cat,” Tomcat said indifferently. “I think God is a cat person.”

“Why can’t He be a dog person?”

“Because all the dog people in the world have died.”

“I suddenly kind of understand theists. If I were a Christian and encountered something like that, I’d definitely kneel down crying to thank the Lord for His grace and salvation… There will always be a million believers in this world who will pray to God for help in times of adversity, all but a hundred of them will get no response. There will always be a hundred who experience something out of sheer coincidence,” Tang Yue said. “That final one hundred cases will then be called miracles.”

“Survivorship bias?”

Tang Yue thought and nodded.

“Comet Tomcat-Tang-Mai I hitting Mars and Deimos hitting the comet—these two matters were very low probability events for us, but to that entity above us…” Tomcat pointed at the sky. “It doesn’t matter how low the probability is; to the Universe, everything is mediocre. That is the mediocrity principle.”

“Mediocrity principle?”

“We find Deimos hitting the comet incredible because the probability is just too small, but in fact, the probability of Deimos appearing anywhere is equal. Its orbital inclination to the local Laplace plane can go from 1.79 to 1.80, and then 1.81 before finally reaching 1.82. Every outcome is mediocre.”

Tang Yue asked casually, “So we too are mediocre?”

Tomcat nodded. “Yes, both you and I are mediocre.”

“This sounds a little disappointing.” Tang Yue smiled. “You have to understand that everyone has once fantasized about being the center of the Universe.”

Tomcat took off its helmet and threw it into the air and caught it. “There is no conflict between the two. If you wish to sound more important, you can use the anthropic principle to verify this point.”

“Tang Yue, Mr. Cat, this is United Space Station.” Mai Dong’s voice sounded in the earpiece. “Can you copy? Is the signal okay?”

“I hear you loud and clear. Lass, are you okay?” Tang Yue asked. “Was the space station affected by the comet?”

“Everything is fine here.”

Comet Tomcat-Tang-Mai I’s collision with Deimos happened at an orbit of twenty thousand kilometers. This formed a very sparse ring—one that was simply in name since it couldn’t even be seen with a telescope. Tomcat said that if the matter in the ring would be evenly distributed in orbit, then two ice particles that exceed one millimeter in size would be more than four thousand kilometers apart from each other.

Tomcat estimated that the comet had left about half a trillion tonnes of matter in orbit, with most of it being thin gases.

This faint ring had zero influence on the space station’s near-orbit. The only thing that was affected was the relay satellites. The three relay satellites were located at an orbit of 17,000 kilometers; therefore, Tomcat and Tang Yue were worried that they would be damaged by the collision. But thankfully, their worries didn’t come to fruition as they continued working as per normal.

“Lass, we are having a meteor shower over here.”

“Really?” Mai Dong’s eyes lit up. “How big are they?”

“Very, very big!” Tang Yue drew a deep breath. “This is definitely the most spectacular meteor shower that humanity has ever seen. It doesn’t come from any particular constellation… It covers the entire sky.”

The girl exclaimed over the comms. She couldn’t see the shooting stars from the space station, nor had she ever seen a meteor shower before. Hence, she found it impossible to imagine what kind of scene the most spectacular meteor shower in human history would look like. This was fate’s gift to them—in the form of fireworks—for surviving the calamity.