Promising the Earth

SCIENTISTS PLAN 'NOAH'S ARK' ON THE MOON

Writing in an article published in the Oxford Academic journal BioScience. a group of scientists have revealed that they're working on plans to create a 'biorepository' on the Moon where frozen samples of the world's most at-risk species would be sent.

They've proposed that the lunar vault would be built on either the moon's north or the south poles where temperatures in the shadows of craters can fall to -246°C and so would not need an active power supply to preserve the biological tissue stored there. These samples would first come from our species most at risk of extinction, before being expanded to cover most other plant and animal species, with the idea that if they become extinct on earth, their cells could be defrosted and used to clone replacements.

There is already a frozen seed vault h in Svalbard, Norway, which provides long-term storage of duplicates of seeds conserved in genebanks around the world to protect the world's food supply against war, disease and natural disasters, but they don't include animal tissue such as sperm, eggs, embryos or DNA. And in 2016 water from melting permafrost caused by climate change leaked into the laboratory, which furthers their argument that having another base on the Moon would be a good backup plan.

Acknowledging that this is a decades-long program the scientists realise that it will require collaboration from nations, cultures, agencies and international stakeholders in developing their plans. They write: "Such a biorepository would safeguard biodiversity and act as a hedge against its loss occurring because of natural disasters, climate change, over-population resource depletion, wars, socioeconomic threats and other causes on Earth...Protecting Earth's life must be a top priority in the rush on the moon sites for industries and many types of science."

You can read their full proposal HERE.