Over the weekend, I was reading an article about time capsules; specifically, one that’s scheduled to be opened in 8113.
My question is, do you think anyone will be around to open it?
Sure!
And that person will meet one of 6 descriptions:
[ol]
[li]A genetically engineered human who may not be recognizably human[/li][li]An artificially created person, developed from a currently-existing, non-human, animal or plant species[/li][li] OpalCat will open it. (She can’t resist mysterious packages.) Hi Opal! :)[/li][li]A person of AI origin[/li][li]A person not native to this planet.[/li][li]A primative savage who cannot read the contents of the capsule.[/li][/ol]
All other options are ferociously unlikely. 
Why? Humankind was around six thousand years ago. We were even somewhat civilized three thousand years ago. Three thousand more years seems quite doable, even if we were have a few little blips between then and now.
More likely the time capsule would be opened or destroyed before then. Few large artifacts survive from three thousand years ago.
You know what would work? A time-capsule satellite. Send it up and program it to reenter in thirty centuries.
HA!
It would be salvaged for recyclable metals by the first L5 colony that gets set up.
I think that another interesting question is whether anyone will remember it’s there. How do you propagate that little bit of information across six millenia? Imagine that the capsule really is buried somewhere safe, where no one will accidentally dig into it when burying a new sub-ether communications cable. How will people in 8113 know it’s there?
Right now, that information is stored in some books and magazines and newspaper, that will have fallen to dust. Even if those are also stored on microfilm or microfiche somewhere, it will have degraded in a thousand years. The information is on the internet, (in other words, stored on computers) but how long before the media that it is stored on have similarly decayed to unreadbility, or simply become obsolete and therefore unreadable? (Ever needed some data stored on a tape format that hasn’t been made for 15 years? Not fun, trust me.) The only way for the information to survive is if it’s inscribed in some durable form (say, carved into a stone tablet) that isn’t destroyed or lost or forgotten about, or if this meme is propagated forward in time, i.e. if there is an unbroken chain (or chains) of at least one person in each generation who cares enough to remember it and pass it on.
I’m not at all sure we could:
a) build a machine that will remain functional in the harsh conditions of space for that length of time
b) build a machine that will autonomously remain in a stable orbit for that length of time
Very true. I work at a museum, and we’re the repository for time capsules in this area after they’re found and opened. (2000 seemed to be a benchmark year for when capsules were set to be opened.)
Despite the best intentions of those who deposited them, the contents are ususally damaged, even after only a hundred years or so. Water leakage is the main culprit, but there’s also the “inherent vice” of the artifacts themselves. Materials break down over time, often damaging the artifact placed next to it.
Modern materials are the worst. The acids in paper, unstable plastics-- most likely, unless extreme care was taken, the items in a time capsule placed today will be a glob of goo by the time it’s opened in the year 8000.
Well, I am an English teacher so I speak with some authority on spacecraft design.
I understand space is quite good for machines as it is cool and dry. It is not obvious to me why such a scheme would not work.
‘Inherent Vice,’ great name for a band.
Space is also full of radiation (which plays havoc with electronics) and micrometeorites (which put holes in things). In giving up humidity and weather, you’re also giving up the protection of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Also, if you’re planning to do a powered de-orbit, you need to worry about a power supply that will survive, even in sleep mode, for thousands of years. (Forget batteries. With nukes, long halflife means you’d need a lot of material to generate enough power. For solar, I’d think that radiation and micrometeorites would degrade the panels over time). You’d also need propellant. Rocket fuel won’t work. I’m WAGging that it’s not shelf-stable that long. Plus for any propellant I can think of, even if you design a really good container, it will inevitably leak out into space over time.
Now, that said, deep space probes like Pioneer and Voyager actually are time capusules in a sense. Pioneer 10 & 11 are out of power, a fate soon to be shared by Voyagers 1 & 2, but they’re all on escape trajectories, winging away from the Sun at hundreds of kilometers per second, leaving behind the solar wind and dusty interplanetary medium. They’ll be eroded a bit by dust and radiation, and over extremely long timescales the metal that composes them will sublime away into space. Nonetheless, cruising in interstellar space, they will almost certainly outlast any other artifact of the 20th century. Unfortunately, they’re not coming back, so I guess they’re messages in bottles, more than time capsules.
Here’s a link to the article:
Beer! They’ve got beer!
Ummmm… Hello?
Am I the only person who remembers Star Trek The Motion Picture? V’Ger nearly destroyed the earth. Unless you can make sure that we’ll have Captain Kirk around when this thing comes back, I say no deal.
I still want to put one of those cans of peanut brittle with the spring loaded snakes in a time capsule though.
I love it.
