Twenty - one trillion bytes of code are now sitting underneath the Arctic permafrost in an apocalypse - proof vault just in case civilization collapse within the next millennium ( orperhaps soonergiven the nation of current affairs ) .
The projection was recently make out by the code - host political program GitHub , which transferred over 21 TB of open - author information onto 186 Virginia reel of digital light-sensitive archival film . grant to aGitHub blog Charles William Post , the Virginia reel of motion picture were then sent over to Svalbard , a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean some 1,000 kilometers ( 600 miles ) north of mainland Europe , and placed in theArctic World Archivefound deep in an abandoned coal mine 250 meter under the frozen permafrost . Here , it will remain safe at least 1,000 years .
GitHub is a platform used to file away and horde source code used by computer software developers and programmers , much of which is undefendable - source and freely uncommitted to apply . Among their monument , you’re able to find the dupe blueprints used to produce all kinds of technology , from fundamental operating system to complex automobile eruditeness programme — useful stuff to know if you ’re consume to restart guild from scratch .
The data is stack away on piqlFilm , a super - durable sensitive that can be read with a estimator . However , the vault also contains a reel of human being - decipherable motion-picture show too , just in case the necessary engineering science is not uncommitted in the future .
" version , decrypt , and uncompressing this data will demand considerable computation itself . In hypothesis , it could be done without computers , but it would be very tedious and difficult , " Github explains ina guideto the GitHub Code Vault .
“ Our expectation is that you did n’t need our definitions of software package , computer , and other terms . We imagine you have computers of your own , plausibly vastly more advanced than ours , and possibly fundamentally differently architected . However , it ’s possible that you have deficient computers to ours , or even no computers at all . In fount of that eventuality , we have prepared an uncompressed , unencoded , man - clear reel of data which we call the Tech Tree . ”
The goal of the Arctic Code Vault is to ensure that “ the world ’s most irreplaceable digital store of art , culture , and lit ” are secured in the event of an existential threat to humanity , whether that ’s atomic warfare , climate change , or ( dare we say ) a pandemic . The vault already contains a figure of data point deposits from the National Archives of Mexico and Brazil , the Vatican Library , the National Museum of Norway , the European Space Agency , the Museum of the Person , Alinari , and a number of other organizations .
Svalbard is an idealistic location as it is well - relate to the wider world , yet persist geographic aloof and pose in a electroneutral demilitarise location . The permafrost and weather condition conditions offer stale , ironic long - term storage . It ’s also home toGlobal Seed Vault , also recognize as the “ Doomsday Vault , ” used to safeguard the world ’s seeds and plant .
