DNA stored on crystal could bring back humanity billions of years after extinction

30 comments

1. Superman would be proud, as he had information on crystals as well, also the information of his dead civilisation.

2. Future beings will have us on display under a glass casing like the Morris Worm computer virus.

3. Please don’t. If we go extinct it’s probably because we deserved it

4. Horror movie from the far future when an alien civilisation resurrects a great evil.

   “Turns out it’s man.”

5. Humanity with no prior knowledge of its previous existence. It could be trained in the culture of what ever species discovered it. It would only be human in form.

   Also, humanity is evolving. The human on the crystal, may not be the version required in millions of years.

   You could do this in a massive book if you wanted to. With tiny writing. The fact it is on a crystal is irrelevant really.

6. Whatever you do, don’t store any actual human history on it or it’s a waste of good material.

7. Crystal storage is cool

   Bringing humans back from extinction is just a hook to get their research in the news cycle, nothing more

8. I think whatever advanced species finds such a crystal would do well to leave it well alone.

9. This got me thinking of the ‘The chicken or the Egg’ dilemma again.

   I need a lie down now. 

10. John Gray would say this is just another illustration of immorality. In reality the crystal will likely not make it intact through time. Look at the changes to the planet surface over mere millions of years let alone billions. So it can’t be stored anywhere safely. Shooting it into space will not work because of the expansion of the universe. It will never be found.

11. Launch copies out into various directions in space with a repeating signal from the payload, and see what happens.

12. I think we’ll be better off without a second chance actually

13. I wonder if they’ll look at it and say the closest approximation in their language to “Bloody IKEA instructions, there’s always some bits missing”.

14. Unfortunately the researcher did not wash their hands after handling their cat…

    Aliens that discover the crystal vials of DNA are now over run by cat boys and cat girls… May the lord have mercy on their souls…

15. Do presume this is the DNA of an actual person alive today ?

16. As far as we are aware, interstellar travel is impossible, and should we go extinct the fact that we have used up all of the easily accessible high energy sources of fuel make the rise and technological advancement of anything that comes after us on Earth essentially impossible.

    Nobody is bringing us back.

17. Any aliens that resurrected us would keep us in a zoo, study our pathological behaviour, and then conclude “no wonder these morons went extinct”

18. Why would we do that. What possible benefit is there. Once we’re gone we won’t be around to care about our existence as a species.

19. If humanity is extinct, who will know, or even want to, bring it back?

20. People saying we would be in a zoo. I think it’s far more likely, we would be food.

21. What a fascinating project. Thank you for sharing, digging in to read more now 🙂

22. Billionaires everywhere thinking of starting their own planets.

    Personally as soon as someone manages to make death inconsequential we will see some dark days.

23. If any alien life form is watching the decline of our species I don’t think they would want that to happen. We suck.

24. Who is going to do that? We’re extinct and an alien would need to know what they had and how to do it, if they would even want to.

    Totally pointless exercise.

25. > used lasers to inscribe the data on a 5D crystal

    It’s a 3D crystal, just like every other physical object we interact with.

26. The book “Nuclear War” by Annie Jacobsen made an interesting point… 2000 years after making ourselves extinct, the Earth will move on and replace us with something else. We’ll become as irrelevant and assigned to the history books just the same as dinosaurs did. Species come and go. 

27. This will probably be like Alien in reverse. They’re going to regret sticking their stupid heads in that egg.

28. Looking forward to Gaia rebooting all life and battling robot dinosaurs in 1000 years.

29. Humans raised without culture would be barely be different from other apes, I doubt we’d be highly regarded by another species in our primitive state

30. Why would any species want to bring back the human race. We deserve to become extinct