Our survival is not the point. It is an act of hope and the manifestation of our goodwill to the rest of the universe. There is nothing more valuable that we can offer to the Universe than our culture, history, knowledge, and the Earth's biological data.
Imagine if you were an alien species who somehow comes across this capsule hundreds of millions or billions of years from now. It's proof of sentient life elsewhere! But then you date the U-238 and realize that they're probably all dead...
But, they've left all of their civilization, culture, heritage, and knowledge behind. And you get to experience that, even recreate a tiny simulacrum of their world. And it gives you something, it's a tangible form of communication and cooperation across aeons.
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In the short term, the backup is probably useful to have. Imagine if a collection is lost to fire or some other catastrophe, and one of the closer ones could be used to bring it back. Case in point, the fire at Notre-Dame. In 2015, Dr. Andrew Tallon, an art historian, painstakingly scanned all of Notre Dame, https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/04/16/we-have-b...
I think it's important to be honest. Would you have flagged his work as pointless in 2015? After all, the Cathedral has stood for centuries, been photographed so many times, what's the point of a 3D scan?
After 2019's fire, those scans became important (unsure to what degree) to the restoration effort. At some level, by capturing and preserving history, Andrew Tallon helped save history. And now it becomes a part of the story.
That's the goal. To engage in an act of optimism for the betterment of us and all of humanity.
Imagine if you were an alien species who somehow comes across this capsule hundreds of millions or billions of years from now. It's proof of sentient life elsewhere! But then you date the U-238 and realize that they're probably all dead...
But, they've left all of their civilization, culture, heritage, and knowledge behind. And you get to experience that, even recreate a tiny simulacrum of their world. And it gives you something, it's a tangible form of communication and cooperation across aeons.
-
In the short term, the backup is probably useful to have. Imagine if a collection is lost to fire or some other catastrophe, and one of the closer ones could be used to bring it back. Case in point, the fire at Notre-Dame. In 2015, Dr. Andrew Tallon, an art historian, painstakingly scanned all of Notre Dame, https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/04/16/we-have-b...
I think it's important to be honest. Would you have flagged his work as pointless in 2015? After all, the Cathedral has stood for centuries, been photographed so many times, what's the point of a 3D scan?
After 2019's fire, those scans became important (unsure to what degree) to the restoration effort. At some level, by capturing and preserving history, Andrew Tallon helped save history. And now it becomes a part of the story.
That's the goal. To engage in an act of optimism for the betterment of us and all of humanity.