The moon is the perfect location for humanity’s offsite backup

In a recent study, a collaborative team of researchers discusses the potential for future lunar settlers to set up a human activity backup data storage system in the event of a global catastrophe on Earth, which could be used to restore human civilization to a post-disaster planet. This comes as NASA’s Artemis missions plan to send humans back to the moon for the first time since 1972, coupled with current global events such as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, with Russian President Vladimir Putin recently linking nuclear war threatened. Given the current state of world affairs, how important is it to set up some kind of off-world backup?

“The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us how vulnerable our world is to large-scale disasters due to its increasingly interconnected nature,” says Carson Ezell, a Harvard University student, director of the Space Futures Initiative and lead author of the study. “Nevertheless, catastrophe risks are neglected in political discourse because they are unexpected and largely unprecedented. An off-world backup would be an important step in enhancing our ability to recover from a catastrophic disaster, and it would also allow us to recognize our shared human identity and our responsibility and ability to protect it if we make an effort.”

dr Alexandre Lazarian, a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a co-author of the study, likens the study’s backup data storage system to that of an airplane’s black box, also known as a flight data recorder, which investigators later used to determine the cause of a plane crash or accident.

“They can’t save the lives of people on planes, but they can save the lives of people on other planes,” says Dr. lazarian. “And in many cases, for example, it wasn’t hardware but human error that caused the crash.”

Along with Aretmis, the study notes several ambitious manned space missions to the Moon and Mars, not only from the United States but also from China and private space company SpaceX, with researchers hoping to seize this opportunity to establish their back-up system .

“Once a lunar base is in place for humans, a key priority should be to equip it with a computer system that will secure all the information needed to restart life on Earth,” says Dr. Avi Loeb, a professor in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University and co-author of the study. “This includes the genetic information on all forms of terrestrial life, as well as information on all human creations, including books, music and Internet content. The lunar data repository would serve the same purpose as the backup and restore system from a “cloud” computing and storage provider that I recently bought for my new computer. On a clear night the moon would appear like the ultimate ‘cloud’ for data storage.”

Researchers discuss how advances in both laser communications and data storage could enable the deployment of such a system on both the Moon and Mars. They estimate that the total amount stored of books, magazine 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 also estimate that all of that data can be transferred to an appropriate hub within a year or two.

dr Lazarian says the purpose of this backup system is not that we to have be destroyed, but because they exist probability that we can be destroyed. He emphasizes that the purpose of this project is to make people, especially politicians, aware that we are a very vulnerable and fragile civilization and that we are in a very dangerous time because we are destroying ourselves be able.

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 impact, the sun evaporating from our oceans and rivers, or an unexpected catastrophe from a rare astrophysical event like a gamma-ray burst,” says Dr . lob. “The likelihood of any of these phenomena wiping out humanity is highly uncertain, but worth a backup and recovery plan.”

In order to carry out the data protection plan, the researchers emphasize the importance that it is an international project, as opposed to individual nations contributing, as the paper concludes by saying: “International, intergenerational coordination would also Initiatives for improvement enable prospects for the long-term future.”

dr Lazarian says one of the key warnings as to why humanity is in danger comes from astronomy, as researchers use this project to discuss the reasons we may not have heard of a technological extraterrestrial civilization stating: ” The lack of signs of life from civilizations on exoplanets may indicate that civilizations are fragile.”

“This means that civilizations don’t live long,” says Dr. lazarian. “When they get on stage, the advanced industrial level, where they can self-destruct, they do it.”

As always, keep doing science and keep looking up!

Featured Image: Artist’s concept of a future crewed Artemis mission to the South Pole of the Moon. (Source: NASA)