The BBC reports that the work on the Svalbard doomsday seed vault is charging right along…
Engineers have begun the two-month process of cooling down a “doomsday vault”, which will house seeds from all known varieties of key food crops.

The temperature inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will drop to -18C (0F) in. . .   Read More

I have often wondered what the brick circles along many of the streets in San Francisco are. I had always thought they were some kind of historical marker. It turns out they represent a nice piece of long term civic planning and disaster preparedness. Each one marks a 75,000 gallon cistern that is an. . .   Read More

The best-selling book The World Without Us draws scenarios of what our home planet would look like if our civilization suddenly vanished. The book’s website has a small slide show with a graphic illustrations of some scenes from the future in this scenario. Click down to Visual TImeline Slideshow. It’s a coherent. . .   Read More

 
I was once again reminded of Dan Bricklin’s excellent piece on long term software and thought it was worth a mention here.  His basic point is that a governments software, should be as lasting and shared as its other civil infrastructure.  The article does a great job of showing the perils of entrusting all. . .   Read More

Projected view of New York’s skyline after constructionof Ground Zero Memorial :: image from timesonline.co.uk

Here at The Long Now we’re always interested in large-scale, ambitious architecture projects, partly because, of course, designing and building the 10,000-year Clock of the Long Now offers a few large-scale challenges of. . .   Read More

I was reminded the other day by a visitor here at Long Now that the Hoover Dam has one of the more astonishing pieces of long term art embedded into its torrazzo floor. This is one of a very few installations in the world that reference the earth’s ~26,000 year precessional cycle to. . .   Read More

Every 20 years the Shinto temple at Ise is rebuilt. It is an exact copy of the one that has stood there for the last twenty years. They alternate the sites so that they can complete one before taking down the last. Depending on which source you trust, this has been going on, in one. . .   Read More

A little while ago the design for the Svalbard International Seed Vault was released (BBC article).  They are building a long term vault for seed stock preservation.  Interestingly they seem to have chosen the site mainly under the assumption that the planet will only get warmer in the next 200 years.  My understanding of the. . .   Read More

Forwarded to me by Stewart Brand is an amazing article from Archaology Magazine on the construction of the Great Pyramids. After analyzing a 25 year old micro-gravimetric study that showed a spiraling sub structure, it was determined that the pyramids were built with a spiraling ramp as part of the internal structure.

A microgravimetry. . .   Read More

Forwarded to me by Danielle here at Long Now…

Complete article can be found here.

German experts on Thursday hailed Europe’s oldest astronomical observatory, discovered in Saxony-Anhalt last year, a “milestone in archaeological research” after the details of the sensational find were made public.
On Thursday, German experts toasted the discovery as a. . .   Read More