Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge because knowledge is finite, and imagination summarizes everything in the world, drives progress, and is the source of the evolution of knowledge.
Today (18th), the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention, which is eagerly awaited by global science fiction enthusiasts, officially kicked off. In the afternoon, a themed salon called "Science Fiction Imagines the Future - Giant Panda 'Migration' to Mars" opened in the Jupiter Hall of the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum. At the salon, Tan Kai, former editor-in-chief of Science Fiction World, Professor Zhang Hemin, director of Wolong China Giant Panda Research Center, known as "Panda Dad", Zhou Mengqi, photographer and "global ambassador of giant panda culture", and Robert Sawyer, a famous science fiction writer, began their imagination together.
Robert Sawyer, a famous Canadian science fiction writer, shared his views on the theme as a guest, "Can pandas go to Mars?" Of course! Many creatures on our planet can go to Mars. He said that if the panda wants to go to Mars, he also needs to bring bamboo with him, "The good news is that because Mars has 0.375 times the gravitational pull of Earth, so the bamboo can grow better, and the panda will be happy." But after organisms go to Mars, they need fewer other trace elements to grow than Earth, so people and pandas may grow smaller and smaller. ”
Talking about whether pandas can survive on Mars, Robert Sawyer said that current studies indicate that giant pandas have survived on Earth for at least 8 million years, which is enough to show that they are very adaptable to the environment. "At present, it takes six to eight months to get from Earth to Mars, and maybe there may be newer technology to get to Mars faster in the future, but we can also bring pandas with us in other ways to save the pain caused by the long journey." Robert Sawyer thought of another way to put a panda's fertilized eggs in containers to take to Mars.
For the significance of discussing the topic of "giant pandas 'immigrating' to Mars", Tan Kai, former editor-in-chief of Science Fiction World, believes that the significance of the topic lies in bold fantasy. In 1865, the French writer Jules Verne wrote a novel "From the Earth to the Moon", which talks about firing a cannonball at the moon to establish a connection between the earth and the moon. More than a hundred years later, humans actually landed on the moon. "Maybe humans will go to Mars one day, but it should not be humans who go up alone, but they will bring the ecological environment and rebuild a home."
Tan Kai said that the flag of the United Nations is the earth; The flag of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is a panda, so if the panda can go to Mars, it will mark that humans have really succeeded in "landing" Mars. "I think maybe from today, October 18, 2023, Robert Sawyer and we jointly come up with a fantasy called 'How the Panda Goes to Mars'. Maybe everyone thinks it's inconspicuous, but maybe, hundreds of years later, this fantasy can really come true. ”
Zhou Mengqi said that as the common natural heritage of all mankind, the image of giant pandas is deeply loved by people on earth. There are many species in the world, but the giant panda can survive across 8 million years of history and become a fossil-level species, and its body has super adaptability and tenacious vitality, so it has the "warrior" gene of "migration" to Mars. Zhang Hemin, on the other hand, continues to encourage young people to imagine and fantasize, and in his view, many scientific achievements come from fantasy, "Maybe one day it will come true." ”
Red Star News Reporter Zeng Qi Editor Qiao Xueyang
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