Hello, Earth.
Introducing the Lava Library: the longest lasting time capsule ever deployed on Earth.
Humanity, we have a problem.
Our modern civilization, the most technically advanced in human history, has no backup.
Today’s knowledge and culture primarily exists on ephemeral digital storage mediums like hard drives and flash drives.
If a global cataclysm were to occur, like an EMP, a solar flare, or a really bad series of cyber events, most of our digitized knowledge would be gone within a few decades and it would take centuries to re-build.
The Arch Mission Foundation is working to solve this problem.
The Arch Mission Foundation is a nonprofit that preserves human heritage forever.
Our Foundation creates and maintains ultra-long-term data storage archives called Arch Libraries. These libraries are the most durable records of human civilization ever built, using new technologies that can preserve more knowledge for more time.
Our team is dedicated group of designers, engineers, and inventors that feel we have a moral obligation to both our ancestors and our descendants to try to preserve our heritage for the far future.
Since we started in 2015, we’ve launched multiple Arch Libraries to space and to the Moon, with more on the way in 2021.
But what good is an offsite knowledge backup on the Moon if civilization collapses here on Earth?
We’ve been asking ourselves that for many years, which is why we launched our first mission on Earth, The Lava Library.
The Lava Library
The Lava Library is a test mission for an upcoming series of ultra-long-term Earth Archives.
We expect The Lava Library to endure for up to a million years on Earth if undisturbed.
The Lava Library is printed on nickel NanoFiche, an ultra-durable analog nano storage medium developed by The Arch Mission Foundation’s Chief Scientist, Bruce Ha.
NanoFiche can be read without any advanced technology. Since it is an analog storage medium, designed to replace microfiche, it can be viewed using simple optical magnification like a few drops of water or a basic microscope.
Our team selected this technology for our first Earth Library because it is durable, has a high information density, and is likely to be decipherable by future recipients with similar biological traits.
Buried on the HI-SEAS.
The HI-SEAS Valoria I mission crew buried The Lava Library in the lava tubes of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano during a Mars simulation mission in January, 2021.
HI-SEAS (Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) is an analog space habitat located at 8200 feet above sea level. The habitat aids space exploration and research through simulating missions to the Moon and Mars with related human psychology, astrobiology, geology, and technology testing projects.
The Lava Library was selected as one of the technology testing projects for this mission.
The Lava Library contained a time capsule printed to NanoFiche curated by Valoria 1 crew members Hillary Coe and MaryLiz Bender.
Hillary and MaryLiz asked modern-day scholars — such as astronauts Leland Melvin and Nicole Stott, and Futurists Peter Diamandis and Jason Silva — what inspires them about becoming a multi-planetary species, and what that means for humanity.
During an extravehicular activity (EVA), the crew ceremoniously buried The Lava Library in hopes that it is discovered by future Earthlings to offer them a window into what we were thinking about at this very moment. By accessing the library, the beings will see what our vision of the future was, and how it shaped what materialized.
One of the longest lasting time capsules ever deployed on Earth.
One copy of The Lava Library is sealed inside a fortified enclosure intended as a time capsule for future inhabitants of Earth. We produced an additional nine copies to test nano archival technology in extreme Earth environments, such as near active lava flows, and in deep cavernous locations.
In addition to the curated time capsule curated by MaryLiz Bender and Hillary Coe, the Lava Library also included a rosetta stone to help future recipients decode the time HI-SEAS time capsule, along with test images, digital test patterns, and test typography to assist in evaluating nano archival technology in extreme earth environments.
This is the beginning.
This isn’t just a one-off project. This is the beginning of a multi-generational archival effort. We believe that the key to good archival is mass redundancy.
So over the next decade, The Arch Mission Foundation will launch several more Earth Libraries to locations all around the planet in addition to our continued efforts in space.
This is the beginning. We’d love your help.
If you find this endeavor of interest, please join us, to preserve our cultural heritage, for the future. We need more people like you. Creatives, scientists, technologists, archivists, journalists, and more to join our cause.
For more information, visit our website at: www.archmission.org
The Arch Mission Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation designed to continuously preserve and disseminate humanity’s most important knowledge across time and space for the benefit of future civilizations. Please consider a tax deductible donation to help our preservation efforts.
