A “lunar ark” hidden inside the moon’s lava tubes could hold the sperm, eggs and seeds of millions of Earth species, a group of scientists has proposed.
The ark or the bank of eyelashes would be safely hidden in these tunnels and hollow caves carved by lava more than 3 billion years ago and would be powered by solar panels above. It is believed to hold the cryogenically conserved genetic material of all 6.7 million known species of plants, animals and fungi on Earth, which would require at least 250 rocket launches to be transported to the moon, according to researchers.
Scientists believe that the effort could protect the wildlife of our planet against both natural and man-made apocalyptic scenarios, such as a supervolcano eruption or a nuclear war, and could ensure the survival of their genes.
Scientists presented their monthly ark plans on Sunday (March 7th) at the IEEE Aerospace Conference, which took place this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There is this strong interconnection between us and nature,” lead author Jekan Thanga, head of the Space and Terrestrial Exploration Laboratory (SpaceTREx) at the University of Arizona, told Live Science. “We have a responsibility to be the guardians of biodiversity and the means to preserve it.”
Not all the technology needed for this ambitious project still exists, but researchers believe it could be realistically built in the next 30 years, Thanga said.
Existential threats
The main motivation behind the lunar ark is to create a safe storage facility outside the world for biodiversity.
“I like to use data analogy,” Thanga said. “It’s like copying photos and documents from your computer to a separate hard drive, so you have a backup if something goes wrong.”
Therefore, if an apocalyptic event destroyed the natural world or wiped out most of humanity, there would be a chance to “press a reset button,” Thanga said.
In their presentation, the researchers listed the following as potential existential threats to biodiversity on Earth: super-volcanic eruption, global nuclear war, asteroid impact, pandemic, accelerating climate change, global solar storm and global drought.
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“The environment and human civilization are both very fragile,” Thanga said. “There are many of these truly tragic circumstances that could happen.”
Creating genetic backups for biodiversity conservation is not a new concept. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located in the polar circle of Norway, holds genetic evidence of plant species from around the world and has already been used to reintroduce certain plants back into the wild.
However, that safe is still in danger of being destroyed by sea level rise or an asteroid strike.
Only by storing genetic information elsewhere in the Solar System can we ensure that it survives any existential threats on Earth, the researchers said.
Lava tubes
The moon was the obvious choice for an ark outside the world for one main reason: it’s just a four-day journey from Earth, which means that transporting evidence is much easier than taking it to Mars. Building an arc in orbit around the Earth is also not safe enough because of the instability of the orbit, Thanga said.
However, another benefit of building an ark on the moon is that it can be safely hidden in lava tubes. These caverns and tunnels dug beneath the surface formed during the Moon’s burning childhood and have remained untouched ever since. The lava tubes would protect the ark from meteor blows and radiation harmful to DNA. Lava tubes have also been suggested as excellent places to build lunar cities for a human civilization and on the moon, as previously reported by Live Science.
Design of the lunar ark with solar panels on top. (Jekan Thanga)
“Unless there is a direct impact from a meteorite or a nuclear blow, the ark should be fine,” Thanga said. “And there could be up to 200 lava tubes that could be suitable for the ark.”
The researchers propose to first map these tubes using specially designed robots capable of autonomously exploring caverns and tunnels. According to Thanga, the hypothetical SphereX robots would look like big “pokeballs”, with the upper half dark gray and the lower half bronze. SphereX robots would be able to jump around the moon’s low gravity and map tubes using cameras and LIDAR – a method of remote sensing that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure distances.
Once the robots identify a suitable lava tube, then the construction phase could begin.
Base construction
The proposed ark would include two main sections above and below ground. The genetic samples would be kept in cryostodule modules inside the lava tubes that would be connected to the surface by elevators. On the surface, a communications network and solar panels would allow the ark to be maintained autonomously, and an air block would allow human visitors.
An extensive design of the ark presented without the lava tube roof. (Jekan Thanga)
Building the ark would be a huge logistical challenge, but Thanga said that the future monthly missions of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will lay the foundations for these types of construction projects.
Thanga predicts that transporting evidence to the moon will be the most challenging and expensive aspect of building the ark, based on “quick calculations behind the envelope,” he said.
These calculations assume that 50 samples of each species would be needed to successfully reintroduce a species. However, the reintroduction of each species could take up to 500, which would mean that many more missiles would be needed, Thanga said. Also, these calculations do not include the launches needed to transport the materials needed to build the ark in the first place.
“It will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to build the ark and transport the evidence,” Thanga said. “But this is not completely out of the question for international collaborations such as the UN”
Super-cold robots
Even so, owning one is still beyond the reach of the average person.
In order for samples to be cryogenically preserved, they must be stored at extremely low temperatures between minus 292 and minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 180 – minus 196 degrees Celsius). This means that it would be impractical to use humans to sort and extract samples from cryostodule modules. Instead, robots should carry heavy weights.
But at such low temperatures, the robots would freeze on the floor by cold welding, where the metals fuse together at freezing temperatures. The solution, according to researchers, is quantum levitation. This theoretical solution is essentially an overloaded version of magnetism that uses superconducting materials to fix objects in a magnetic field.
“You can have things remotely fixed together so you can move the robots through levitation,” Thanga said. “You know, they have invisible strings or strings attached to them.”
Quantum levitation is not yet possible, but it will be needed in the future for other cryogenic projects, such as long-distance space travel, so it’s only a matter of time before someone knows how to do it, Thanga said.
Researchers say a 30-year period is possible, but if humanity were to face an impending existential crisis, it could be done much faster, Thanga said.
“This is a project that would require a real emergency for many people to be energetic enough to go after it,” Thanga said. “I think it could be done within 10-15 years, if necessary.”
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This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article.