The team wants to first send a mission called SphereX (not to be confused with NASA’s Earth-orbiting SPHEREx mission) to explore the lunar lava tubes and collect lunar regolith (loose rock and dirt). The lunar ark sounds like a setting for a sci-fi novel, but Thanga says the possibility for such a shelter is very real-and it could come to fruition in the next three decades. These tunnel-like structures are an ideal home because they insulate the facility from harsh conditions in much the same way that Svalbard’s storage facility, built deep inside a mountain, provides protection from the elements here on Earth. With that in mind, Thanga’s team plans to install the lunar ark inside the moon’s extensive network of over 200 lava tubes just beneath its rocky surface. Why Scientists Stored DNA in the Wizard of Oz.It’s a somewhat appropriate analog for the lunar ark, but storing 6.7 million gametes, spores, and seeds isn’t the same on the moon as it is on Earth there are the added challenges of microgravity, radiation levels roughly 200 times those on Earth, and wildly fluctuating temperatures. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, an Earth-bound version of the lunar ark, opened in 2008 and currently contains more than 1 million crop seed samples, including staples like rice, wheat, and barley. And such a shelter could come to fruition in the next three decades, he adds. “As a human civilization, we’re in a fragile state,” he says. This ark wouldn’t contain two of every animal, but rather a repository of cryogenically frozen reproductive cells from 6.7 million species on our planet.Ĭonsider it a global insurance policy, says Jekan Thanga, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Arizona’s Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, and the project’s mastermind. While this might seem like a suggestion straight out of science fiction, the scientists behind this proposal have calculated that sending the cryogenically-frozen samples of sperm, eggs, spores, and seeds of some 6.7 million species to the relative safety of the moon might well be a feasible operation.A team at the University of Arizona is proposing a concept that just might save us from extinction: a 21st-century version of Noah’s Ark on the moon. "Earth is naturally a volatile environment," said study author Jekan Thangavelautham in his presentation on the paper, titled "Lunar Pits and Lava Tubes for a Modern Ark," adding that an Earth-based repository of samples would still leave specimens vulnerable to getting destroyed in a massive disaster. This lunar ark, the researchers said, could help the earth repopulate if a catastrophic disaster - such as a deadly epidemic, a supervolcanic eruption, a large-scale nuclear war, widespread drought, or an asteroid - were to occur. The team of six researchers from the University of Arizona presented their idea at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Aerospace Conference, where they said their proposal would protect mankind from extinction. According to a New York Post report, this would be similar, conceptually, to the "Doomsday" seed vault in Svalbard, Norway, which currently holds more than a million crop samples originating from almost every country in the world.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |