The 'Earth's Black Box' project, designed to survive the apocalypse, has been revived after five years of silence. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
The 16-metre long, four-metre high steel monolith, topped with solar panels encased behind glass, is expected to be installed in December near Queenstown on the edge of a remote western Tasmanian airfield.
'Hundreds of data sets, measurements and interactions relating to the health of our planet will be continuously collected and safely stored for future generations,' the project's website says.
The project's inspiration is an aeroplane's flight recorder, also known as a 'black box' (despite usually being orange). That was also an Australian invention: the prototype was put together at a government research lab in Melbourne in 1954.
The Earth's Black Box was announced to coincide with the UN's 2021 Cop26 climate talks. Digital hard drives were turned on to begin recording data from the talks, to be transferred later to the physical box.
But then all mysteriously fell quiet for five years. Some wondered if it was all just performance art or a PR stunt, owing to the fact the project was dreamed up by Rouser Lab, an Australian not-for-profit 'experimental environmental communications agency', rather than scientists.
Its artistic director, Jonathan Kneebone, said: 'It will be approximately five years to the day that we are finally able to install the work. In those five years, we have been evolving the design, data storage systems, source materials, web platform – as well as developing funding models to sustain the project into the future.'
The University of Tasmania, which was initially affiliated, has dropped out. The mayor of West Coast council, Shane Pitt, said the project could be a tourist attraction.
This year, the Doomsday Clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been to apocalypse.
If the Earth's Black Box is ever complete, future beings may trawl through its records to determine where it all went wrong. Or we will land the plane safely, rendering the strange object as a reminder of an apocalypse that never came.