Wikipedia Will Be Printed On Tiny Metal Plates And Sent To The Moon

A non-profit called Arch Foundation is hoping to send millions of Wikipedia pages to the moon, only with a twist: they'll be "written" on small metal plates. The pages will be sourced from the English version of Wikipedia, and assuming everything goes according to plan, the content will be on the lunar surface within the next couple years. The total archive size will be similar to a CD.

Arch Foundation was formed in 2015 with the goal of creating archives about humanity and dispersing them throughout the cosmos, according to The Verge, which first reported on the plan. According to the report, Arch Foundation plans to etch the Wikipedia content onto small metal plates that are thinner than a single human hair.

Millions of pages may be transcribed onto the metal sheets, the sum total of them forming a package around the same size as a compact disc. The archive, in a way, will be something like a backup of data about humanity, its history, and its culture, one that could survive if something catastrophic were to happen to Earth.

Future humans — or perhaps lucky extraterrestrials — may find the data caches in the very distant future, getting a glimpse of life during this relatively slim segment of human existence.

In addition to the Wikipedia pages, which will include some of the top entries in non-English categories, the team will also send the Long Now Foundation's Rosetta Project, which contains more than 1500 human languages.

According to The Verge, the non-profit plans to announce other data that'll be sent to the lunar surface next year. This won't be the first time the company has sent info into space, though, with previous projects including an archive of the Foundation book trilogy.

SOURCE: The Verge