Backup of Earth's life in case of doomsday possible

There are ten asteroids that  NASA classified as "potentially hazardous" in its June report from  NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.

Image: Elzloy / Shutterstock

As if there is not enough, every year several previously unseen asteroids whizz past Earth, sometimes with only with a few days' warning. This year two of these asteroids came very close to Earth, with one in May sailing past only 15,000km away. Impact of any of them could wipe out majority of living creatures and plants from the Earth's surface.

Deflectiong of such objects Bruce Willis Armageddon style is one part. But other one is plan B: to build safe vault for keeping samples of plants, in case if the Doomsday comes. The first (or even zero) approach is to make it deep underground in remote rocks. The keeping of the "frozen zoos" - embryos and frozen DNA samples of humans and animals is much more complex task.

The most famous is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located on a remote Norwegian island about 1,300km from the North Pole.

Image:  Flickr/Landbruks og matdepartementet, CC BY-ND 

Long tunnels made in the rock base lead to the vaults, carved in the mountain. Of course it is not very reliable protection against asteroid impact, but this is what we have now

Image:  Flickr/Landbruks og matdepartementet, CC BY-ND

Image: Flickr/Landbruks og matdepartementet, CC BY-ND

Unfortunately, there were reports earlier this year that the vault had suffered issues with water from the surrounding melting permafrost (caused by global warming) gaining entry to parts of the structure. This is another illustration that to keep life backups even deep underground is not safe. Perhaps, the best strategy would be to build similar vault in space. While Moon is too weak gravity and located too close to the Earth, it is not the best place, Mars seems to be perfect place, especially its underground lava tube caverns.

Image:  NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory / University of Arizona  - Entrance to the lava tube on the Martian volcano Pavonis Mons

In these caverns, samples will be well protected from radiation and temperatures differences on the surface.

So it seems that some people have already accepted the fate of humanity version 1.0 and that it will end sometime in the relative near term. The movement to create our backup ready for humanity version 2.0 has already begun.

Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-life-earth-doomsday-event.html