Engineers to build nderground lunar ark filled with millions of spores, seeds, sperm and egg samples coming from different Earth’s species.
Engineers are now planning to build a particular type of underground lunar ark that would reportedly be filled with millions of spores, seeds, sperm and egg samples coming from different Earth’s species. This would then be hidden in a certain network of tubes over on the moon in order to provide a particular type of genetic backup for the planet in case of a worst case scenario.
According to an article from JournalStar, scientists coming from the University of Arizona have actually proposed a certain lunar ark that will be dubbed as a type of “modern global insurance policy” for a wide range of 6.7 million Earth species cryogenically all preserved and hidden inside quite a series of tunnels and caves under the moon’s very surface.
They also noted that the vault itself could actually protect the genetic materials in case of an event of “total annihilation of Earth” which could then be triggered by a huge drop in biodiversity. However, any move towards building such a bunker is still way off as of the moment.
A professor of mechanical engineering and aerospace at the official University of Arizona College of Engineering, Jekan Thanga noted that Earth is actually most naturally a volatile environment.
It was also said that humans had quite a close call around 75,000 years ago when the previous Toba supervolcanic eruption. This had cost a 1,000 year cooling period and was also noted by some to be aligned with the estimated drop in human diversity.
Due to the general human civilization having such a huge footprint, if it were then to collapse, this could possibly have a negative cascading effect towards the rest of the whole planet.
Quite similarly, these types of vaults already exist on Earth itself just like the Global Seed Vault which is already home to just under a million seed samples and is located in the remote island known as Svalbard which is an archipelago located between both Norway as well as the North Pole.
In a paper that was presented some time earlier this month, a certain team coming from the University of Arizona noted that they think that their concept could potentially preserve life from Earth just in case something drastic would happen. The researchers then stated that the project is still very dependent on the general advancements when it comes to cryo-robotics technology.
For it to be cryopreserved, the seeds should be cooled at an extreme negative 292 Fahrenheit while the stem cells themselves should be stored at negative 320 Fahrenheit, according to the article by Cbs58.
However, the team notes that at these particular temperatures, the metal parts of the base could potentially freeze, jam, or even be cold-welded together. As of the moment, scientists still don’t really understand how the ultimate lack of gravity could have an effect on preserved seeds or even how to communicate along with a certain Earth base.
Originally published at Brinkwire