If we are
honest with
ourselves, as a
civilisation we are
doomed.
Maybe we are not
yet on the
slippery slope and maybe it's not anything we should be
ashamed of, nevertheless we will one day be
gone. Most likely we will only
decline to a point where our
technology is
lost, but we have the
capability to
wipe
ourselves out
completely.
There is an upside to this and that is that life, human or otherwise, will continue.
Let us assume that one day there will be creatures roaming the planet with intelligence
levels similar to that of early man. Maybe there is a way that we can help them.
I propose that we use the moon to communicate with the future inhabitants of the planet.
Humans have always had a fascination with the moon and there is no reason to doubt that
it won't attract the attention of others in the eons to come. I believe that it gives us
the perfect opportunity to leave a message that will survive any terran calamity and,
unaffected by atmosphere or tide it will exist for as long as is needed.
It is important to consider that Earth's future tennants may begin with very little in
the way of tools or knowledge, so the initial message must be something visible to the
naked eye that looks out of place enough to demand further investigation. I suggest
a simple square drawn on the moon's surface and covering about a quarter of the area
visible from Earth.
Now we have their attention we can wait for the new guys to develop a simple telescope.
Through this they will be able to see the moon in greater detail, so we can afford to
make the next sign a little more complex. I suggest a nice matchstick man. This drawing
would need to take up less space than the square, as the observer will now be able to see
it more clearly.
Assuming that this will be enough to start Earth's future inhabitants on a quest to learn
more about the moon we can then supply them with more and more detailed messages. As their
tools develop they will uncover more advanced messages, introducing them to our modern/ancient
language and the basics of our science. Along the way we can include warnings from our
own history and maybe allow the new ones a way to avoid our own shortcomings.
Once we have got this far in our preparation we could even consider writing on the other
side of the moon. That would really give them something delightful to uncover when they
reached out far enough.
The beauty of this idea is that not only would it be a super cool thing to leave behind,
but it is technically feasible with technology we could create today. Imagine it, big
drawings could be done from Earth, simply by nuking the surface. It may not be perfectly
neat, but at the least it would be good enough to draw our first symbols. Later we could
send robots that rove around the lunar surface cutting our messages into it. We could
even prepare for the very distant future by duplicating areas so that meteor impacts are
unlikely to wipe out any message entirely.
As a final thought, if we had the inclination, we could build them a library on the
surface itself.