Related papers: A Lunar Backup Record of Humanity
Data are rapidly growing in size and importance for society, a trend motivated by their enabling power. The accumulation of new data, sustained by progress in technology, leads to a boundless expansion of stored data, in some cases with an…
The number of disasters has increased over the past decade where these calamities significantly affect the functionality of communication networks. In the context of 6G, airborne and spaceborne networks offer hope in disaster recovery to…
Unexpected dynamic phenomena have surprised solar system observers in the past and have led to important discoveries about solar system workings. Observations at the initial stages of these events provide crucial information on the physical…
Real-time forecasting is important to the society. It uses continuous data streams to update forecasts for sustained accuracy. But the data source is vulnerable to attacks or accidents and the dynamics of forecasting failure and recovery…
We introduce a world vision in which data is endowed with memory. In this data-centric systems paradigm, data items can be enabled to retain all or some of their previous values. We call this ability "remembrance" and posit that it empowers…
Numerous missions planned for the next decade are likely to target a handful of smal sites of interest on the Moon's surface, creating risks of crowding and interference at these locations. The Moon presents finite and scarce areas with…
Kepler's primary mission is a search for earth-size exoplanets in the habitable zone of late-type stars using the transit method. To effectively accomplish this mission, Kepler orbits the Sun and stares nearly continuously at one…
Modern tools for biological research, especially microscopy, have rapidly advanced in recent years, which has led to the generation of increasingly large amounts of data on a regular basis. The result is that scientists desperately need…
We introduce a model to study the impact of catastrophes on evolutionary paths. If we do not allow catastrophes the number of changes in the maximum fitness of a population grows logarithmically with respect to time. Allowing catastrophes…
Space weather refers to conditions on the Sun, in the interplanetary space and in the Earth space environment that can influence the performance and reliability of space-borne and ground-based technological systems and can endanger human…
Although vital for life on Earth, solar activity poses questions and increasing threats to humanity due to the Sun's unknown dynamics, intensified by our dependence on terrestrial and space-based infrastructure. This situation is compounded…
As the global population continues to expand, the demand for natural resources increases. Unfortunately, human activities account for 23% of greenhouse gas emissions. On a positive note, remote sensing technologies have emerged as a…
While technology and trade have made modern food systems increasingly resilient to disruptions, it is unknown if human society could survive the most extreme threats to agriculture, such as from severe climate change or nuclear/biological…
Many astronomy data centres still work on filesystems. Industry has moved on; current practice in computing infrastructure is to achieve Big Data scalability using object stores rather than POSIX file systems. This presents us with…
Civilization cannot sustain an exponential growth for long time even when neglecting numerous laws of physics! In this paper, we examine what are fundamental obstacles to long term survival of a civilization and its possibility to colonize…
Mature industrial sectors (e.g., aviation) collect their real world failures in incident databases to inform safety improvements. Intelligent systems currently cause real world harms without a collective memory of their failings. As a…
Modern datacenters assemble a very large number of disk drives under a single roof. Even if economic and technical factors where to make individual drives more reliable (which is not at all clear, given the commoditization of the…
After an earthquake, disaster sites pose a multitude of health and safety concerns. A rescue operation of people trapped in the ruins after an earthquake disaster requires a series of intelligent behavior, including planning. For a…
This document presents the study conducted during the European Moon Rover System Pre-Phase A project, in which we have developed a lunar rover system, with a modular approach, capable of carrying out different missions with different…
This white paper recognizes gaps in observations that will, when addressed, much improve solar radiation hazard and geomagnetic storm forecasting. Radiation forecasting depends on observations of the entire "Solar Radiation Hemisphere" that…