China’s young people have created yet another word to reflect their growing disappointment with the stressful work culture. The new lifestyle hot word, tang ping, is an action rather than a feeling — deciding to just go by, using a minimum effort at an unsatisfactory job.

Wendy said that her lying-down philosophy could be summed up as “Putting the peacefulness of the body and soul first.” “According to the mainstream standard, a good lifestyle must include working hard, trying to get good results on work evaluations, struggling to buy a house and a car, and having babies,” she said, “However, I am looking forward to ‘lying down entirely’— quitting my job and living off my savings.”

Tang ping has come under fire from Chinese state media. “No matter what, young people must have confidence in the future,” read a newspaper. “China is the world’s most populous country, with rich labor resources and a huge market advantage. The only happy life is a hard-working life. “The lying-down community obviously isn’t good for the country’s economic and social development,” said Guangming Daily. However, the newspaper added that tang ping shouldn’t be ignored without reflection: if China wants to encourage hard work in the young generation, it should first try to improve their quality of life.

“The state is worried about what would happen if everyone stopped working,” said Huang Ping, a literature professor. “But humans aren’t merely tools for making things,” he said. To lie down is a reasonable choice rather than a negative attitude. For some young people, it’s a way for them to reduce pressure. “When you can’t catch up with society’s development— say, high house prices — tang ping is actually the most practical choice.” he said.

Lying down can be seen as the opposite of involution (内卷), referring to societies becoming trapped in continual cycles of competition. “In a relatively good social environment, people may feel involuted, but at least they’re trying” he said. “If it’s worse, people will tang ping.”

Alternatively, the more motivated among the young generation have accepted FIRE—“Financial Independence, Retire Early” — in the hope of someday escaping the severe competition once and for all.

In order to survive trips to Mars, humans need oxygen. Now, a team of scientists has designed a robot that could extract oxygen from water on the Red Planet.

The robot, which is called “AI chemist”, used a machine learning model to find a compound that could ignite an oxygen-producing chemical reaction on Mars. The compound, known as a catalyst (催化剂), is made entirely from elements found in Martian meteorites (陨石)   — which means, if such a system could work reliably, space travelers would not need to bring oxygen or even the catalyst needed to produce it.

Mars’ atmosphere contains only trace amounts of oxygen. But scientists have detected evidence of liquid water beneath the planet’s southern ice cap. To create the breathable gas, researchers wanted to find a way to break down this water into its hydrogen and oxygen molecules using materials found on Mars.

Their robot analyzed five meteorites that either came from Mars or had a composition similar to that of the Martian surface. Using a laser, it identified significant amounts of iron, nickel, calcium, magnesium, aluminum and manganese in the samples. From these six elements, the robot’s algorithm (算法) determined it could produce more than 3.7 million possible molecules to break down water and form oxygen on Mars. According to the researchers, finding the best one from this extensive list would take roughly 2,000 years of human labor, but for the AI chemist, it took only weeks.

“On Earth, we don’t use these six elements,” Yi Luo, a co-author of the study says. “They are not the best choices for catalysts, but it’s only what you’ve got on Mars.”

With its chosen catalyst, the system could produce oxygen from the Martian materials at around -37℃, demonstrating the chemical reaction could be possible on the cold Martian surface.

Notably, the robot was able to carry out the entire process — analyzing the rock samples, identifying the best possible catalyst and producing it without human intervention.