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Scientists Are Building A 'Black Box' To Record The End Of Civilisation

Lord Lucan

Lord Lucan

Justified & Ancient
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Feb 17, 2017
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A thousand years into the future, I wonder what they'll think of this:

Earth is getting a black box to record our climate change actions, and it's already started listening​

On a granite-strewn plain, surrounded by gnarled mountains, sits a giant steel box.

Incongruous in the landscape, much like Kubrick's black monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame, its alien presence suggests it was put there with intent.

And if those that discover it can decipher the messages it contains, they could get a glimpse of what caused the fall of the civilisation that was there before.

This is Earth's Black Box.

'First and foremost, it's a tool'​

When an aeroplane crashes, it's left to investigators to sift through the wreckage to recover the black box.

It's hoped the recorded contents can be used to help others avoid the same fate.

And so it is with Earth's Black Box: a 10-metre-by-4-metre-by-3-metre steel monolith that's about to be built on a remote outcrop on Tasmania's west coast.

Chosen for its geopolitical and geological stability, ahead of other candidates like Malta, Norway and Qatar, the idea is that the Tasmanian site can cradle the black box for the benefit of a future civilisation, should catastrophic climate change cause the downfall of ours.

If that sounds unhinged, it's worth remembering that we're currently on track for as much as 2.7C of warming this century.

Ask any climate scientist what happens when warming breaches 2C, and they'll almost invariably tell you it's not worth thinking about.

Plenty of past civilisations and empires have collapsed in the face of less.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-12-06/climate-change-earth-black-box-recorder/100621778
 
Its useless.

It should be used to store methods of making alternative, long term technology, for those who one day may have forgotten how to.
 
Analog Boy, thats a good idea.

(Gingerys books are good too)
 
Here are some basic points from the initial New York Times article about the project ...
Earth Is Getting a ‘Black Box’ to Hold Humans Accountable for Climate Change

The vault, known as Earth’s Black Box, will be constructed in Tasmania, an Australian island state off the south coast. It will operate much like a plane’s flight recorder, which records an aircraft’s final moments before crashing. But the makers of this new black box — including data researchers from the University of Tasmania, artists and architects — say they hope it won’t have to be opened.

“I’m on the plane; I don’t want it to crash,” said Jim Curtis, the executive creative director of an Australian advertising agency where the project was conceived. “I really hope that it’s not too late.”

Many questions remain, such as whether Earth really needs a black box and how future generations would decipher it. Mr. Curtis said the box would be designed “to hold our leaders to account.” He added, “If civilization does crash, this box will survive with a completely objective data story.” ...

The project is not alone in its attempt to jolt human beings out of what the creators suggest is short-term thinking about global warming. It is not the first to try to salvage pieces of human civilization for posterity. Scientists have built repositories for everything from essential food crops to glacier ice to frozen animal embryos, some of them already extinct. Others have tried to hide our nuclear waste so that future generations can avoid the deathly toxic material.

The box’s creators say it will record leaders’ actions (or inaction) by scraping the internet for keywords relating to climate change from newspapers, social media and peer-reviewed journals. It will collect daily metrics, including average oceanic and land temperatures, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and biodiversity loss. ...

The vault — a 33-foot-long box made of three-inch thick steel — is not expected to be completed until the middle of next year. But creators say they have already begun to gather information. Eventually, the data will be stored on a giant, automated, solar-powered hard drive with a capacity to collect information for about 50 years.

Tasmania was chosen for its relative geopolitical and environmental safety, and the monolith will be designed to be resilient against threats including cyclones, earthquakes and, with its sloped walls, attacks by vandals. ...

How will future visitors retrieve the contents of the box?

The creators say they are working on it. One option is to encode the contents in various formats, such as in script or binary code that would be unraveled. The creators say that if the planet is nearing cataclysm, instructions for opening the box would be etched on its exterior. The message can’t be included beforehand, they say, because of the risk that vandals would attempt to crack it open. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/world/australia/earth-black-box-climate-change.html
 
Here's one of the illustrations that have accompanied the announcement of the Earth's Black Box project. It's a rendering, not a photo. The actual Black Box will not be in place until sometime in 2022.

EarthsBlackBox-Illo-1.jpg

There's one thing that still confuses me about the concept's installation as illustrated. As you can see in this image, one end of the Black Box is intended to be cantilevered, extending outward over a descending slope.

I've seen allusions to the installation being cantilevered, but I've yet to see any explanation why it will sit in such a cantilevered manner.

:dunno:
 
EnolaGaia said:
As you can see in this image, one end of the Black Box is intended to be cantilevered, extending outward over a descending slope.​

I've seen allusions to the installation being cantilevered, but I've yet to see any explanation why it will sit in such a cantilevered manner.

:dunno:
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To make it easier to get it back on the truck in a few years’ time, when life is still ticking along nicely, and everyone’s conveniently forgotten about it?

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
To make it easier to get it back on the truck in a few years’ time, when life is still ticking along nicely, and everyone’s conveniently forgotten about it?

maximus otter
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Yes, that would make it easier to take it to a recycling facility.
 
The Black Box is currently offline as it is inundated with calls about mis-sold pensions, abuses of handicapped parking spaces and endless complaints from those in the future who had heat pumps installed without the full advance explanation of how shit they actually are.
Essentially, it’s going to become an Angst Battery. I hope they have a targeting system on it so if any hostile alien Mothership gets in range they can point and detonate it and fuck that invasion plan up with our accumulated petty despair and annoyances channeled into a pure defensive fuckblaster force.
 
Kondoru said:
Its useless.

It should be used to store methods of making alternative, long term technology, for those who one day may have forgotten how to.
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But it might be used to make alternative technology. What makes you think it won't be scrapped for the metal if it is found in said remote location?
 
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