Let’s say I wanted to leave a message to my descendants who are about to leave the Earth 5 billion years from now due to the sun getting ready to engulf it. After much deliberation, I decide to carve into a material the actual lyrics to ‘Louie, Louie’, the three words that end in -gry and the reason why pigeons bob their heads when they walk. Obviously, I would want an extremely stable substance that I can carve into, one which won’t break down in… well, okay, billions is unrealistic, so let’s say a hundred thousand years… assuming it was kept in a stable, cool, dry environment such as an archive.
If it’s protected from erosion, rock or fired clay will last virtually forever. Your real problem will be a few thousand years down the road, when the Holy Order of Zif will declare all relics from the past heretical and destroy them all.
Try a search on “deep time”, for proposals for various ways to preserve information over the very long term.
Well, if the hearsay is true, then diamonds are the hardest substance in the world. Thus, if you were to get a huge diamond and carve whatever you want on it, I imagine that it would last the longest. Exactly how long it would last I have no idea, but it would be logical that the hardest substance in the world would be the one to last the longest.
I say put 'em all in one thread here.What environment could be cooler?
And I’m sure Cecil will still be fighting the good fight in a mere 5 billion years.
On a side note can’t you just imagine the responses to ANY GQ then. “Hey lookit the newbie, only been here 4 billion years and he thinks he’s got an original question.Feh.Do a search,dude,there’s been 453,687,785 threads on that in the last 50 million years.”
Diamonds won’t burn in a fire. The only way to burn a diamond is to heat it with an acetylene torch until it’s white hot, and then drop it in a pool of liquid oxygen. I saw a film of someone doing this, you ought to see it, it’s really cool.
But as to the OP, I don’t think there is any physical substance that will have the indestructible properties you seek. The only thing I can think of is to create a set of big and small stars to spell out the message in morse code. Good luck with that project.
Try an information-based approach. Create a legend, and start a religion to propagate your story orally as a myth. Or shoot it into space on a laser beam. I dunno…
Well, since we’re being unrealistic, why not burn it into the face of the moon, in letters big enough to see from earth? The only danger to your message would be asteroids (are they called meteors/meteorites if they don’t come to earth?), and I don’t think they’re much of a problem on the near-side of the moon.
Actually, meteors aren’t much of a problem on any part of the moon. Almost all of those pock marks up there were made three billion years ago.
There is granite older than two billion years, and it’s been sitting out. Put it in that stable, cool, dry archive and it would probably last for another two billion and ten years.
I see. Well, i think price wise, ceramics are good enough :). I mean…we DO have clay tablets a few thousand years old and in pretty good condition. Hmm…maybe i should write something out, put it on clay, fire the clay, the bury it somewhere.
write a stupid e-mail about the US Post Office and a bill through Congress that would charge people for e-mail, advise people to send it to all of their friends. Put your message at the bottom.
We still have bugs preserved in these little globs of tree sap that got oozed out during the Jurassic. They ought to hold text for a few hundred thousand years. Especially if they are not exposed to the elements.
The only problem with that is that legends tend to change over time. The message would get distorted. I can just see it in 100,000 years:
…and the great and glorious Cecil, upon establishing his covenant with the chosen dopers, did guide the hand of Arken thus creating the great commandment:
**Thou shalt not ask the question “What is the third word that ends in ‘-gry’”? **
For asking that question will be blasphemous in the eyes of Cecil and cause the pigeons to bob their heads thusly as a sign of your shame. And the chosen dopers rejoyced shouting, “Glory be to Cecil. We shall keep his commandment as a sign of our everlasting covenant!” and they began singing “Louie Louie” as they feasted upon the plants and animals of the land.
How about carving your message into a thick glass plate? Glass is very erosion resistant, and I understand glass artifacts hold up well to the test of time. It would have to be protected from breakage, but then so would a clay tablet. You could also etch some calibration marks on it so they can measure how much it flowed.
Wow, thanks for all the great replies, guys! This was by far the neatest thread I ever posted.
Incidentally, it seems that I am not the only person to think about this problem. When I told a friend of mine about this question, he pointed me here.
And for you technically-minded types, just in case you want the message to the future to be a full multimedia presentations, they also have this product.
Encode your message in DNA, package it in a highly contagious retrovirus, and release the virus upon the Earth’s populations. As long as all your virus does is insert the message into our DNA, no one will notice the virus.
There are vast amounts of “junk DNA” in our genes, stuff inserted by countless retroviruses over the millions of years of our evolution.
