A “lunar ark” hidden in the moon’s lava tubes could store the sperm, eggs and seeds of millions of species of the earth, a group of scientists suggested.
The ark, or no bank, would be safely hidden in these hollowed-out tunnels and caves sculpted by lava more than 3 billion years ago and would be powered by solar panels above. It contains the cryogenically preserved genetic material of all 6.7 million known species of plants, animals and fungi on earth, which according to the researchers need at least 250 rockets to transport to the Moon.
Scientists believe the effort could protect the wildlife of our planet from natural and human apocalyptic scenarios, such as an eruption of a supervolcano or a nuclear war, and ensure the survival of their genes.
The scientists presented their lunar market plans at the IEEE Aviation Conference on Sunday (March 7), which was held virtually this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There is this strong interrelationship between us and nature,” lead author Jekan Thanga, head of the Space and Terrestrial Robotic Exploration (SpaceTREx) Laboratory at the University of Arizona, told WordsSideKick. “We have a responsibility to be protectors of biodiversity and the means to preserve it.”
There is not yet all the technology needed for this ambitious project, but the researchers think it can be built realistically within the next 30 years, Thanga said.
Existing threats
The main motivation behind the lunar market is to create a safe storage facility for biodiversity.
“I like to use the data analogy,” Thanga said. “It’s like copying your photos and documents from your computer to a separate hard drive so you have a backup if something goes wrong.”
If an apocalyptic event destroys the natural world or wipes out most of humanity, there would be a chance to ‘press a reset button,’ Thanga said.
In their presentation, the researchers cite the following as possible existential threats to biodiversity on Earth: Supervolcanic 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 very fragile,” Thanga said. “There are a lot of these really tragic circumstances that can happen.”
Creating genetic backup to conserve biodiversity is not a new concept. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located in the Arctic Circle in Norway, contains the genetic samples of plant species from around the world and has already been used to reintroduce certain plants into the wild.
However, the vault is still in danger of being destroyed by rising sea levels or by an asteroid attack.
Only by storing the genetic information elsewhere in the solar system can we ensure that it survives any existing threats to the earth, the researchers said.
Lava tubes
The moon was, for one main reason, the obvious choice for an extraterrestrial ark: it is only a four-day journey from Earth, which means that transporting the monsters is much easier than to take it to Mars. Thanga said building an ark in an orbit around the earth is also not enough.
Another advantage of building an ark on the moon, however, is that it can be safely hidden in lava tubes. These hollowed-out caves and tunnels beneath the surface were formed during the moon’s fiery infancy and have remained untouched ever since. Lava tubes would protect the ark from meteoric attacks and DNA-damaging radiation. The lava tubes have also been suggested as excellent places to build lunar cities for a human civilization on the Moon, as previously reported by Live Science.
Design of the lunar orbit with solar panels above. (Jekan Thanga)
“Unless a meteor or a nuclear attack is hit directly, the ark must be good,” Thanga said. “And there could be as many as 200 lava tubes that could fit the ark.”
The researchers suggest mapping these tubes first using specially designed robots that can explore the caves and tunnels autonomously. According to Thanga, the hypothetical SphereX robots will look like large “pokeballs” with a dark metallic gray upper half and bronze lower half. The SphereX robots can jump around in the low gravity of the moon and map the tubes with cameras and LIDAR – a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure distances.
Once the robots identify a suitable lava tube, the construction phase can begin.
Building the base
The proposed ark would contain two main sections above and below the ground. The genetic samples are kept in cryostore modules in the lava tubes that are connected to the surface by elevators. On the face of it, a communications array and solar panels would autonomously maintain the ark and provide an airlock for human visitors.
An extensive design of the ark without the roof of the lava tube. (Jekan Thanga)
Building the ark would be a major logistical challenge, but Thanga said the upcoming lunar missions by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) would lay the foundation for these types of construction projects.
Thanga predicts that transporting the samples to the moon will be the most challenging and expensive aspect of building the ark, based on some “quick calculations of the envelope,” he said.
These calculations assume that 50 samples of each species would be needed to successfully reintroduce a species. However, reintroducing each species could take as many as 500, which means many more rockets are needed, Thanga said. These calculations also 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 monsters,” Thanga said. “But this is not entirely out of the question for international cooperation such as the UN”
Super cold robots
Nevertheless, one aspect of the lunar market is currently out of reach.
To preserve the samples cryos, it must be stored at extremely low temperatures between minus 292 and minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 180 to minus 196 degrees Celsius). This means that it would be impractical to use people to sort and retrieve samples from the cryostore modules. Instead, robots will have to do the hard work.
But at such low temperatures, the robots on the floor would freeze through cold welding, where metals melt together below freezing temperatures. According to the researchers, the solution is quantum levitation. This theoretical solution is basically a super-powered version of magnetism that uses superconducting materials to trap objects in a magnetic field.
“You can pin things together at a distance so you can move the robots with levitation,” Thanga said. “It’s like you know, they have invisible strings or cords on.”
Quantum levitation is not yet possible, but it will also be necessary in the future for other cryogenic projects such as long-distance space travel. So it’s only a matter of time before someone works out how to do it, Thanga said.
According to the researchers, a period of thirty years is possible, but if humanity is confronted with an impending existential crisis, it can be done much faster, Thanga said.
“This is a project that would be very urgently needed to get a lot of people enough to work on it,” Thanga said. “I think it can be achieved within 10 to 15 years if necessary.”
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This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article.