About (very) long term preservation.

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I was thinking yesterday: when we're considering preservation (video game and any other media/art forms) we're only thinking in short term or human-scale time length.

What about centuries, no, millennia of human and geological History. Even if we secure things in a bunker the planet will still have earthquakes and volcanoes.

When it comes to several hundred of millennia and billions of years the planet will get absorbed by the growing Red Giant.

Maybe launching data into space or other exoplanets could work for those but then again we'll have black holes, (super)novae and gamma ray bursts among other things that could erase it.

We still got time but we can already start thinking about that today.

 

[skramz]

all that just so the future generation can experience cheetahmen? i call bust!

 

[redux007]

all that just so the future generation can experience cheetahmen? i call bust!

 

[Leon]

Nothing in this world lasts forever, on the religious side we're told this from the outset, that this world in this form is temporary and will eventually end, but for non-religious, especially for more agnostic/atheistic mindsets, the idea of a finite universe is alot for the mind to handle considering the sheer size and timescales at play here.
I should, however, point out that even modern science says eventually the universe will end, the amount of time is hard to comprehend, but it is a set in stone truth.

And as it should be, if things lasted truly forever, then human growth would end, we would become slaves to the past, never truly advancing, human beings are by design constantly trying to learn and advance, hitting a brick wall has been terrible for humanity imo, we start losing the will to live as we are by nature a curious species.

I must point out that NOTHING stays static, earth 5000 years ago had a much different climate than we do today, with the fertile crescent being far more tropical than the desert it is today.

As for preservation methods, there's a few options, the best option would be currently diamond encoding which can theoretically last up to 10k years, but even that is useless if you have no way of decoding it. which requires modern technology.

Also i need to point out that science currently is more of the belief that earth will not be consumed by the sun, but will come close, and be scorched by it, but still probably survive the red giant phase, though it has not ruled it out either, though i should point out estimates currently are that earth has 100 million years left of habitability if things continue on the same path.