A “lunar ark” hidden inside the lava tubes of the Moon could preserve the sperm, eggs and seeds of millions of species on Earth, a group of scientists has proposed.
The ark, or gene bank, would be safely hidden in these hollow tunnels and caves sculpted by lava more than 3 billion years ago and would be powered by solar panels located at the top. According to the researchers, it would maintain 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 transport them to the Moon.
Scientists believe the effort could safeguard our planet’s wildlife against both natural and human apocalyptic scenarios, such as a supervolcano eruption or nuclear war, and ensure the survival of its genes.
Scientists presented their lunar ark plans on Sunday (March 7) at the IEEE Aerospace Conference, which was held virtually this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There’s this strong interconnection between us and nature,” lead author Jekan Thanga, head of the University of Arizona’s SpaceTREx Robotics Exploration Laboratory (SpaceTREx), told Live Science. “We have a responsibility to be guardians of biodiversity and the means to preserve it.”
Not all the technology needed for this ambitious project exists yet, but researchers think it could be built realistically 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 your photos and documents from your computer to a separate hard drive, so you have a backup if something goes wrong.”
So if an apocalyptic event destroyed the natural world or wiped out most of humanity, there would be the possibility of “pressing a restart button,” Thanga said.
In their presentation, the researchers listed the potential existential threats to biodiversity on Earth: supervolcanic eruption, global nuclear war, asteroid impact, pandemic, accelerating climate change, global solar storm, and global drought.
Related: Doomsday: 9 Real Ways the Earth Could End
“The environment and human civilization are very fragile,” Thanga said. “There are a lot of these really tragic circumstances that could happen.”
It is not a new concept to create genetic backups to preserve biodiversity. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located within the Arctic Circle of Norway, contains genetic samples of plant species from around the world and has already been used to reintroduce certain plants back into nature.
However, this vault still runs the risk of being destroyed by sea level rise or an asteroid attack.
The researchers said that only by storing genetic information elsewhere in the solar system can it survive any existential threat to Earth.
Lava tubes
The Moon was the obvious choice for an ark out of the world for one of the main reasons: it’s only a four-day journey from Earth, which means that transporting the samples is much easier than carrying them. them on Mars. Building an ark in orbit around the Earth is also not safe enough due to the instability of the orbit, Thanga said.
However, another advantage of building an ark on the moon is that it can be safely hidden in lava tubes. These hollow caverns and tunnels below the surface were formed during the Moon’s fiery infancy and have since been intact. Lava tubes would protect the ark from meteorite blows and radiation that would damage DNA. Lava tubes have also been suggested as excellent places to build lunar cities for a human civilization on the Moon, as Live Science previously reported.
Lunar ark design with solar panels on top. (Jekan Thanga)
“Unless there is a direct blow from a meteorite or a nuclear attack, 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 first propose mapping these tubes using specially designed robots capable of autonomously exploring caverns and tunnels. The hypothetical SphereX robots would resemble large “pokeballs” with an upper half dark metallic gray and the lower half bronze, according to Thanga. SphereX robots would be able to jump to the low gravity of the Moon and map tubes using cameras and LIDAR, a remote sensing method that uses pulsed laser-shaped light to measure distances.
Once the robots identify a suitable lava tube, the construction phase could begin.
Building the base
The proposed ark would include two main sections above and below ground. Genetic samples would be stored in cryostoration modules inside 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 held autonomously and an air key would allow human visitors.
An enlarged design of the ark shown without the lava tube roof. (Jekan Thanga)
Building the ark would be a huge logistical challenge, but Thanga said the upcoming lunar missions of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will lay the groundwork for such construction projects.
Thanga predicts that transporting the samples to the moon will be the most difficult and costly aspect of building the ark, based on some “quick and later calculations,” 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 actually take up to 500, which would mean many more rockets would be needed, Thanga said. These calculations also do not include the releases needed to transport the materials needed to build the ark.
“It will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to build the ark and transport samples,” Thanga said. “But this is not entirely out of the question for international collaborations such as the UN”
Super cold robots
However, one aspect of the lunar ark is currently out of reach.
In order for the samples to be cryogenically preserved, they must be stored at extremely low temperatures between 292 and 321 degrees Fahrenheit (180 to 196 degrees Celsius). This means that it would not be practical to use humans to classify and retrieve samples from cryostory modules. Instead, robots should do the weight.
But at such low temperatures, the robots would freeze to the ground by cold welding, where the metals melt at freezing temperatures. According to researchers, the solution is quantum levitation. This theoretical solution is basically a supercharged version of magnetism that uses superconducting materials to fix objects in a magnetic field.
“You can get things remotely fixed together, so you can move the robots by levitation,” Thanga said. “It’s like you know, they have invisible strings or attached strings.”
Quantum levitation is not yet possible, but it will also 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 finds out how to do it, Thanga said.
Researchers say a 30-year term is possible, but if humanity were to face an impending existential crisis it could be done much more quickly, Thanga said.
“This is a project that would require a real urgency to have a lot of people energized enough to go there,” Thanga said. “I think it could be achieved within ten to fifteen years if necessary.”
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This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article.