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Arch Foundation Plans "Lunar Library" on a Tiny Sheet of Metal

posted by takyon on Tuesday May 15 2018, @11:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'd-buy-that-for-a-nickel dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow0245

This nonprofit plans to send millions of Wikipedia pages to the Moon — printed on tiny metal sheets

A nonprofit with grand ambitions of setting up a library on the Moon is planning to send the entire English archive of Wikipedia to the lunar surface sometime within the next couple of years.

Don't worry: there won't be reams of Wikipedia printouts sitting in the lunar soil. Instead, the organization says it will send up millions of Wikipedia articles in the form of miniaturized prints, etched into tiny sheets of metal that are thinner than the average human hair. The nonprofit claims that with this method, it can send up millions of pages of text in a package that's about the size of a CD.

The unusual mission is the brainchild of the Arch Foundation (pronounced "arc," short for archive.) Formed in 2015, the nonprofit's goal is to set up archives of humanity's culture in different places throughout our cosmic neighborhood, as a way to inspire people about space. "We thought of this project to archive human civilization around the Solar System — to create a permanent off-site backup of all our cultural achievements," Arch co-founder Nova Spivack tells The Verge. "So, our knowledge, our art, our languages, our history — all the stuff the human mind has produced." The idea is that these archives could last for millions to billions of years in space, where they might be found and read by future humans.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @11:31PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @11:31PM (#680224)

    Like littering?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 16 2018, @12:07AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 16 2018, @12:07AM (#680231)

    These kinds of "projects" are stupid. A waste of resources for what? And anyway, one micro-meteorite would turn the Library into dust. Those do still hit the moon you know.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Wednesday May 16 2018, @12:49AM (2 children)

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 16 2018, @12:49AM (#680244) Journal

      These kinds of "projects" are stupid.

      Why, on the contrary. According to their founding document [novaspivack.com]:

      There are many reasons to attempt a project like this – for one thing, it’s an inspirational idea if nothing else — but beyond that it could be of benefit to future generations on Earth.

      So, benefiting future generations and inspiring current ones and all, it's not stupid at all.

      A waste of resources for what?

      I'm glad you asked!

      a planetary insurance policy – a backup of our most important knowledge – in the...case that an extinction-level event takes place...comet impact, meteor impact, global thermonuclear war, sudden volcanic greenhouse, global pandemic, biowarfare, nanotechnology grey goo apocalypse, giant solar flare or galactic high energy particle burst, large scale EMP event, or the rise of evil robots or AI that terminate the humans, etc...also has benefits if the world does not end — for example, it can evolve over time into a solar system wide area storage network for storing and accessing data in orbital and locations.

      Their words, not mine. And that's just for starters.

      making archs able to self-replicate and self-power using materials found in space (such as on meteorites or low gravity moons)...still science-fiction from the perspective of today’s technology, but it’s going to be possible within the next 50 to 100 years...

      Anyone who thinks I'm making this up should visit the link above and read for yourself. These people are some of the most visionary thinkers in the space business.