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How to build something that lasts 10k years

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Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#111

Post by asdff »

jotm wrote: post #83
bambax wrote: post #30

> engineers are building a clock in the Texan desert that will last for 10,000 years Well, we don't know that. There is no way to know. Selling this to rich guys like Bezos is kind of like selling "after the rapture pet care"...

It wont last 10,000 years. Nothing more complicated than scribblings on a tough rock will, and even those will likely be indecipherable. Seed banks are especially funny/sad. They need to constantly produce seeds, which means constant growth of male/female plants, under human supervision. No seeds last more than a few years under ideal conditions. Even DNA is unrecoverable/unusable after a few centuries iiirc.

>Even DNA is unrecoverable/unusable after a few centuries iiirc

Only if poorly stored. We have plenty of neanderthal DNA, because we have lots of neanderthal teeth which we drill into to extract this ancient DNA. Properly stored, DNA can last thousands of years, I'd wager indefinitely in the right buffer and in liquid nitrogen.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#112

Post by saalweachter »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #57
phito wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages ...pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it i…

Funny thing is, if we discovered some ancient tomb or burial site with these messages we'd write it off as superstition and open it up anyway. I'm not sure some future civilization would be any different.

I also particularly liked the idea of covering it with a layer of small boulders to make it unappealing to agriculture. It's like, have you ever heard of New England?

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#114

Post by asdff »

jotm wrote: post #84
msiyer wrote: post #47

We can learn from Nature - atoms, photons, DNA... all last long. Really long.

Atoms, photons, sure. DNA is dead for all practical purposes after less than 1000 years.

We have neanderthal DNA sequenced. All depends on storage conditions.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#115

Post by jaggederest »

sago wrote: post #77
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing is, if we discovered some ancient tomb or burial site with these messages we'd write it off as superstition and open it up anyway. I'm not sure some future civilization would be any different.

I agree. Hiding something and saying "please don't look for it," seems extraordinarily naïve of human nature. If the threat is widespread human and environmental destruction, I wonder if an additional layer of warning does not need to consist of more constrained lethality. "We're going to show you what this stuff is, you should've really paid attention to the warnings." "It is a place of evil: all who venture into th…

Especially given we know cave paintings from several thousand years ago are relatively intelligible. People hunting bison.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#116

Post by scj »

phito wrote: post #39
vincnetas wrote: post #10

Finland is building nuclear waste storage facility which is planned to last for 100.000 years. There are quite few interesting design decisions to be made taking this lifespan in to account, for example if current civilization will be wiped out, what symbols you should put on a door to discourage someone in future to opening the door. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... https://www.youtube…

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages ...pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it i…

"This is where you get poison rocks to put in the rivers of enemies."

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#117

Post by mythrwy »

jotm wrote: post #83
bambax wrote: post #30

> engineers are building a clock in the Texan desert that will last for 10,000 years Well, we don't know that. There is no way to know. Selling this to rich guys like Bezos is kind of like selling "after the rapture pet care"...

It wont last 10,000 years. Nothing more complicated than scribblings on a tough rock will, and even those will likely be indecipherable. Seed banks are especially funny/sad. They need to constantly produce seeds, which means constant growth of male/female plants, under human supervision. No seeds last more than a few years under ideal conditions. Even DNA is unrecoverable/unusable after a few centuries iiirc.

Seeds of some species can last considerably longer than a few years.

For example Amaranth (pigweed) I've read can lay dormant for something like 40 years and then sprout. And that's outside in native conditions.

Bananas maybe not so much. Not sure.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#118

Post by chrischattin »

adolph wrote: post #45

Snoopy may last that long: After Stafford and Cernan docked with Charlie Brown and re-entered it, Snoopy's ascent stage was sent on a trajectory past the Moon into a heliocentric orbit by firing its engine to fuel depletion (unlike the subsequent Apollo 11 ascent stage, which was left in lunar orbit to eventually crash; all ascent stages after Apollo 11 were instead intentionally steered into the Moon to obtain readi…

They may have just succeeded...

https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-are-98-sure-they-ve...

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#119

Post by zaarn »

phito wrote: post #39
vincnetas wrote: post #10

Finland is building nuclear waste storage facility which is planned to last for 100.000 years. There are quite few interesting design decisions to be made taking this lifespan in to account, for example if current civilization will be wiped out, what symbols you should put on a door to discourage someone in future to opening the door. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... https://www.youtube…

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages ...pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it i…

I believe a while ago I read a fanfiction where the characters in the story found this place. They didn't understand the warning until they all suffered from ARS.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#120

Post by kiliantics »

tropdrop wrote: post #105
Mirioron wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bastide and Fabbri came to the conclusion that the most durable thing that humanity has ever made is culture: religion, folklore, belief systems. I'm not sure if I agree with this. I think that there is a ludicrous amount of survivorship bias at play with culture. How much do we know about ancient Egypt through culture and not the writings and structures that were left behind? How much do we know about some of the…

Here are some examples that make me give the idea a little credence - To this day, despite over 1000 years of Christianity, Russian people continue to uphold some superstitions (and, in the case of 'Maslenitsa'[1], holidays) that trace their origin to pagan pre-Kievan Rus'. Strange phenomenons that never found an adoption by the Orthodox church, e.g. that each house possesses its own spirit ('Domovoy'[2]), and that y…

There's evidence that a story passed down orally for up to 30k years was true:

https://www.nature.com/articles/520033a

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