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![]() Speaking in Room 104 earlier this year, Thanga said: “Hopefully when the cost of space travel comes down we can start doing this, but we really need to start sending samples up. The crate will be stored in a network of lava tubes – discovered in 2013 – that were formed after molten springs flowed beneath the Moon’s surface billions of years ago.Įxperts believe the tubes could provide protection from solar radiation as well as meteors and other hazards on the surface.Īnd the moon’s harsh environment “makes it an excellent place to store specimens that need to stay very cold and undisturbed for hundreds of years at a time,” the project team said. Nearly seven million samples will be sent to the moon in multiple payloads and then stored below the surface in vaults, CBS reported. There is a similar project on Earth – the Svalbard Seed Bank in Norway, dubbed the “doomsday vault” – which holds hundreds of thousands of seed samples.īut Thanga believes that storing samples on our planet is too risky. The scientist highlighted climate change, global pandemics and nuclear war as possible causes of catastrophic disasters. “Because human civilization has such a large footprint, if it were to collapse, that could have a negative impact on the rest of the planet.” “As humans, we had a close call about 75,000 years ago with the supervolcanic eruption of Toba, which caused a cooling period lasting 1,000 years and, according to some, consistent with a decline estimates of human diversity. “Earth is inherently a volatile environment,” he said. University of Arizona professor Jekan Thanga, who proposed the idea in a paper earlier this year, says humanity must protect the world from global catastrophes. Inspired by Noah’s Ark, experts fear that Earth may not be safe enough to sustain humanity – or any species.
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