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ESA's Scientist Suggests A Noah's Ark On the Moon
13.7BillionYears writes "Many are familiar with a supermarket tabloid (whose name eludes me) offering ridiculous headlines, one of the most famous being 'Noah's Ark Found on the Moon!' In an ironic twist, that one may yet come to pass. The BBC reports that the European Space Agency's chief scientist, Dr. Bernard Foing, has said that there should be a Noah's Ark on the Moon consisting of a repository for the DNA of every single species of plant and animal, in case the Earth is destroyed by an asteroid or nuclear holocaust. One wonders how you'd go about indexing every life form including undiscovered species and how you'd protect the DNA from radiation."
EPROMS are only good for about 10 years, and thats without all the radiation theyd get from being in space. I think Charles Stross had the right idea with using gold-and-diamond optical discs.
Smoking is an expensive, slow, and unreliable method of suicide.
Because of global warming, the polar ice caps melt causing the ocean temperatures to drop leading to an overall drop in temperature to where the next ice age begins. Duh.
End the FUD
I found his speaking style engaging and intelligent, and his theories to be enlightening. You each owe it to yourself to read an interview with him, which he gave out copies of to participants in the talks at the camp.
The interview details his theory on the whys and hows of what has been termed "the coming technological singularity". Transhumanists here will know what I speak of - all others, please look into it - google is your friend.
One of the ideas presented in the above interview referenced, John Smart lays out the idea that natural disasters do little to impeded evolutionary development, in fact, he contends that such disasters cause leaps in development:
from the above interview
"Catastrophes are to be expected, and they accelerate change whenever immune systems learn from them. In my own research, there has never been a catastrophe in known universal history (supernova, KT-meteorite, plague, civilization collapse, nuclear detonation, reactor meltdown, computer virus, 9/11, you name it) that did not function to accelerate the average distributed complexity (ADC) of the computational network in which it was embedded." - John Smart
The ideas and theory he sets forth in the above interview make a lot of sense. He does, however, always hold that it is a theory, and may be wrong - several times during his talks at Burning Man he was adament in stating this. However, I think his ideas highlight and explain certain domains within the idea of a technological singularity in a logical and consistent manner.
Please note that I am open to debate on this entire issue. If anyone can offer me detailed analysis or references to papers or writings regarding the unlikelyness or impossibility of a technological singularity occurring, I am all ears, so to speak. I want to hear the other side of the story, from the dissenters. All of it is fascinating, but it is hard to determine what the likelyhood of any of it is if you have only heard one side...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
CNN is also covering the story.
More information:
The relationship between space and survival has been expressed by many others, such as Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, William Burrows and Robert Shapiro.