In a recent study, a collaborative team of researchers discusses the potential for future lunar colonists to establish a backup data storage system of human activity in the event of a global catastrophe on Earth that occurs could use to restore human civilization on a post-catastrophe planet. . This comes as NASA’s Artemis missions plan to send humans back to the moon for the first time since 1972, alongside current global events such as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the Ukraine War, with Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening recently a nuclear war. Given the current state of world affairs, how important is it to establish some sort of off-world data backup?
“The COVID-19 pandemic taught us how vulnerable our world is to large-scale disasters because of its increasing interconnectedness,” says Carson Ezell, who is a graduate student at Harvard University, director of the Space Futures Initiative and lead author of the study. . “Yet catastrophic risks are neglected in policy discourse because they are unexpected and largely unprecedented. An off-world backup of data would be an important step in improving our ability to recover from a disaster catastrophic, and would also allow us to recognize our shared human identity and our responsibility and ability to protect it if we make the effort.”
Dr. Alexandre Lazarian, who is a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a co-author of the study, compares the study’s security data storage system to that of a black box aircraft, also known as a flight data recorder, which investigators later use to determine the cause of an air crash or accident.
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“They can’t save people’s lives on the plane, but they can save people’s lives on other planes,” says Dr. Lazarian. “And in many cases, for example, it wasn’t the hardware, it was human error that caused the crash.”
Along with Aretmis, the study points to several ambitious human spaceflight missions to both the Moon and Mars, not only from the United States, but also from China and the private space company, SpaceX, with researchers hoping to take advantage of this opportunity to establish your data backup system.
“Once a lunar base is established for humans, an important priority should be to equip it with a computer system that backs up all the information necessary to restart life on Earth,” says Dr. Avi Loeb , who is a professor in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University and co-author of the study. “This includes genetic information about all Earth life forms, as well as information about all human creations, including books, music and Internet content. The lunar data repository would serve the same purpose as the copy system security and recovery at a ‘cloud’ computing and storage provider I recently purchased for my new computer. On a clear night, the Moon would seem like the ultimate ‘cloud’ for data storage.”
Researchers discuss how advances in both laser communications and data storage could enable such a system to be established on both the Moon and Mars. They estimate that the total stored amount of books, journal articles, movies, genetic information such as the number of species on Earth and the human genome, and images of the Earth is about 1.07 x 1016 bytes of data, and they also estimate that all this data can be transferred to a suitable center in a year or two.
Dr. Lazarian says that the purpose of this backup system is not so that we have to destroy ourselves, but because there is a possibility that we could destroy ourselves. He emphasizes that the purpose of this project is to alert people, especially politicians, that we are a very vulnerable and fragile civilization, pointing out that we are in a very dangerous moment because we can destroy ourselves.
But what kinds of risks does humanity really face in terms of its own destruction?
“There are many existential risks to life on Earth, including climate change, a nuclear world war, pandemics, asteroid impacts, the Sun boiling our oceans and rivers, or an unexpected calamity from a rare astrophysical event like a gamma-ray burst,” says Dr. Loeb. “The likelihood of any of these phenomena destroying humanity is highly uncertain, but it’s worth having a backup and a recovery plan.”
To carry out the data backup plan, the researchers stress the importance of it being an international project, as opposed to individual nations contributing to it, as the paper concludes by saying, “International and intergenerational coordination would also enable new initiatives to improve long-term future prospects.”
Dr. Lazarian says one of the biggest warnings why humanity is in danger comes from astronomy, as researchers use this project to discuss the reasons why we may not have heard of a technological extraterrestrial civilization, stating “ the absence of life signatures”. Civilizations on exoplanets could suggest that civilizations are fragile.”
“It means civilizations don’t live long,” says Dr. Lazarian. “As they get to the stage, the advanced industrial stage, where they can be destroyed, they do.”
As always, keep doing science and keep searching!
Featured image: An artist’s concept of a future manned Artemis mission to the Moon’s south pole. (Credit: NASA)
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