There are 4 sentences written on the old NASA vehicles that have landed on the Moon so far. Two on Apollo 11 and two on Apollo 17. Both bear the signature of former US President Richard Nixon. Other visible “words” include a plaque installed in 1971 with the names of US and Soviet astronauts who have died so far, and logos on various equipment, including astronaut Alan Sheperd’s golf balls. Astronaut David Scott says he left a Bible on top of the wheeled lunar surface vehicle in Mare Imbrium, which the astronauts drove. But even if the Bible is there, it is not readable because of the sunlight and gamma rays that have fallen on it for 53 years.
But last February, a collection of almost 30 million pages was sent to the Moon. It includes 25,000 songs and a lot of artwork. How?
You may remember the Odysseus lander that tilted during landing. It landed on the south polar region of the Moon and left an archive on the lunar surface, officially called the “Galactic Heritage Archive”, which we can call the Lunar Library.
This library is not like any library you know. The pages are engraved on thin nickel layers that can only be read with a microscope. A large part of the archive consists of digitally etched music and images.
In fact, the “library” is so small that it’s the size of a disk that fits in your hand. Nova Spivack, the head of the non-profit Arch Foundation, who managed to send this “library” there on its third attempt, explains that they used nickel because nickel does not rot or oxidize.
“For the first time in history we can say that our civilization will not be lost.”
Spivack says that if the small disks are not hit directly by a meteorite, the library “will last as long as the Moon”: (Scientists’ current best estimate: The Moon will remain in Earth orbit until the Sun turns into a red giant in 5 billion years). “Even if our planet is destroyed in a nuclear war, it will still be there. We can now say for the first time in history that civilization will not disappear.”
The Arch Foundation has another, bigger and longer-lasting mission: to place the Galactic Heritage Archives all over Earth and the Solar System. After all, backing up data more than once is the best way to prevent it from being lost. Here are six highlights from this archive, some fascinating, some funny.
1. First works of art
Cave paintings date back at least 45,000 years. This early art form can often be a “collaborative work”, with different generations contributing even centuries later (such as the hands in the photo above, found in Cueva de las Manos in Argentina, which were painted in waves between 7,300 BC and 400 AD). Hundreds of copies of cave paintings like the one above are now on the Moon.
2. A version of Wikipedia
The lunar library contains a highly offline version of Wikipedia that was outdated long before it was sent. The 6 million articles of this English version were downloaded and added by the Arch Foundation in 2021, but the 10,000 most-read entries were updated in 2022 and placed on the spacecraft.
So this version is Elon Musk before he took over Twitter. So the aliens who find the archive will recognize Musk as the richest person on Earth (currently in third place).
3. Dogecoin
In 2021, fans of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which originated from a joke, launched a campaign called “To The Moon” to encourage everyone to buy Dogecoin to skyrocket its value. We think they have achieved their goal to some extent.
Although not as much as crypto enthusiasts would like, Dogecoin’s value is not as high as it was in 2021. But the features and design of Dogecoin, as well as Bitcoin and Ethereum, are literally on the surface of the Moon. So even if humanity is gone billions of years from now, Shiba will still be there, looking sideways at you.
4. Exactly 25 thousand songs
What do Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin and The Who have in common? They are not just rock music legends, they are rock music legends who are now on the moon. In collaboration with the Melody Trust, which owns the rights to the master recordings of 25,000 classic rock songs, the library now has a list of 25,000 songs on the Moon, with a special focus on 1969, the year of the first moon landing.
The digital archive also includes artwork such as Pink Floyd’s iconic Dark Side of the Moon album cover.
5. The secrets of David Copperfield’s shows
The archive of the famous illusionist David Copperfield is also in the library. It contains all the details of his famous illusions in which he destroyed the Statue of Liberty and crossed the Great Wall of China. Of course, if all these structures are found when the lunar library is discovered years later.
6. Sacred texts are also included
The archive also contains all the texts needed to rebuild civilization. In other words, all the languages included in the Rosetta Project are present in the archive. Religions are also represented: The Koran, the Bible, the Torah, the Indian Vedas, Buddhist scriptures and more are now available on the Moon. There are also images and stories of indigenous traditions from six continents.
Other popular novels have also been added to the archive. These include the Harry Potter series, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, The Lord of the Rings and Dune. Let’s hope the story of a young aristocrat who conquers billions of worlds as God Emperor doesn’t give aliens ideas.
