The mother of all visualization problems.
So you just munged some data as proficiently as Trump offends and demeans minorities. And doing so you discovered some new truths. You know the best truths. But if you can’t communicate and visualize those truths it’s all for pretty much nothing. But however daunting your visualization problem might seem; despair not. Someone out there is dealing with a problem worse than yours.
Imagine there is a door in your apartment that you reeeally don’t want opened. And then you go traveling the world for a year (or 100.000 years) and rent it out in the meantime. What would you put on that door to insure it never gets opened?
That’s pretty much the problem the good folks at Onkalo nuclear repository in Finland are dealing with. Now in the process of drilling tunnels hundreds of meters into the granite bedrock of Olkiluoto to store the country’s nuclear waste for years to come. Nuclear waste encapsulated in copper cylinders will start making it’s way down there in the 2020’s and a hundred years later the vault will be sealed shut never to be opened again. With an emphasize on never.
The thing with nuclear waste is that it stays hazardous for the longest time. Around 100.000 years in this case. What live looks like on earth in 100.000 years is anyone’s guess but we can be pretty certain that our civilization will be long gone by then (for context: the great pyramid of Giza is less than 5.000 years old.) So how do you make yourself understood to a being of uncertain origin that doesn’t share your language or your culture (remember visual culture is strictly cultural). What do you put on that door?
Thankfully we still have 100 years to ponder that question…
References:
- Final Disposal. Retrieved November 12th, 2016, from http://www.posiva.fi/en/final_disposal#.WCdQuPkrJPY
- Rose, Steve (2011, April). Nuclear waste: Keep out — for 100,000 years. Retrieved November 12th, 2016, from: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/apr/24/nuclear-waste-storage.
