At the mouth of the Pearl River in Nansha District of Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, a giant ship, half white on the top and half orange-red on the bottom, stands tall on the drilling rig, and the whole ship is particularly dazzling under the clear sky.

    This is the first ocean drilling ship "Dream" designed and built by China. The research ship, the largest tonnage in China, was successfully tested at the end of last year and has now entered the commissioning and internal assembly stage, which is expected to be fully completed this year.

    Aboard the "Dream", we walked into the laboratory installation site, where pieces of silvery permalloy were being laid on the walls. He Qingyin, engineering and technology director of the business sub-laboratory of the "Dream" supervision group, was busy carefully checking the shielding layer with the magnetometer. More than 3,000 pieces of Permalloy with a total of 1200 square meters, equivalent to the size of 3 basketball courts, He Qingying to ensure that the gap between Permalloy plates does not exceed 1 mm, and each piece of Permalloy plate to fully fit the wall, so as not to affect the magnetic shielding effect.

    "Installing the magnetic shielding chamber is critical. After taking samples from ocean drilling, magnetic experiments are conducted in a laboratory environment shielded from magnetic field interference to determine the age of geological and mineral reservoirs, and to explore geodynamics and geological evolution processes." He Qingyin introduced, "The laboratory innovatingly uses the national production and international leading level of Permalloy shielding layer, the shielding rate of external magnetic signals reaches 99.8%, which can ensure the scientific research and experiment environment."

    As the largest Marine mobile laboratory in the world, the onboard laboratory of "Dream" is equipped with more than 150 sets of various precision experimental instruments. At present, the installation of 12 major systems such as water, electricity, gas and wind has been completed, and the installation of experimental instruments will be conducted soon.

    "Drilling is the most important capability of the Dream." "The purpose of drilling is to drill into the core of the earth's interior and obtain the geological information contained therein to unlock the mysteries of the deep earth," said Zhou Chang, head of the China Geological Survey's "Dream" headquarters.

    There is a saying in drilling science that "drilling 10,000 meters is as difficult as landing on the moon." With the support of technological innovation and equipment integration, "Dream" has the drilling capacity of 11,000 meters in the sea. "This ship is committed to the goal of drilling through the crust and into the mantle layer, which is why it is named Dream." Zhou Chang said.

    "The pressure of 11,000 meters is a challenge for equipment, water, electricity, fluid and materials." Yin Xianfeng, leader of the supervision team of the "Dream", introduced that the whole ship involved 303 major equipment, 8,300 production drawings, and tens of thousands of construction processes, and a total of more than 150 scientific research units participated in the construction, breaking through more than 10 key technologies.

    On board, there are too many innovations. Relying on the independently developed ship-borne intelligent core storage and transportation system, the core can be automatically transferred and stored on the ship, just like "shrimp immediately put in the freezer after being picked up from the sea", ensuring the "fresh" degree of the sample; With the use of energy storage technology and closed-loop power grid, fully loaded 180 crew members can work at sea for 120 days continuously, with a range of 15,000 nautical miles; 1.2 million meters of cable laying, comprehensive coverage of information technology, to achieve ship-shore intelligent collaboration.

    Not far from the ship construction site, the supporting drilling support ship, the world's largest Marine geological core bank, and China's first deep-water scientific research dock have been completed, which will provide strong shore-based support for the operation of the "Dream".