In a billion years time, what will be left of human civilisation?
The pyramids will have long ago crumbled to dust and our technology rusted to nothing. Perhaps we will have found a new life among the stars or reached a higher state of virtual civilisation – especially if the recently announced plans to send a couple to Mars by 2018 come to pass. Maybe Morlocks or apes will rule the planet. The Earth might be a wasteland – destroyed through conflict, environmental catastrophe or the failure to spot an asteroid before it blasts us to oblivion.
But not to worry. Whatever happens to us, something of our legacy will remain – if not on Earth then in space. Around 36,000 km (22,000 miles) above the planet, the long-dead Echostar XVI satellite will continue to orbit, a memorial to humanity. On board, a 12cm-(5 inch-) diameter disc embossed with one hundred pictures representing our civilisation – images of human endeavour, innovation, culture and cruelty; pictures of the natural world and the changes we have brought to it. Or as the artist behind the project, Trevor Paglen, puts it: “A collection of images that will haunt the Earth.”
The Echostar XVI communications satellite was launched in November last year and is designed to remain operational for around 15 years, beaming TV pictures to and from the United States. It is effectively locked in place, in a fixed position, above Earth – its geostationary orbit means that it spins at the same speed that the planet rotates. As with other geostationary spacecraft, its height makes it immune to the drag of the atmosphere. So unlike satellites at lower or higher altitudes, which eventually drift away or plummet to Earth, Echostar XVI will keep its position until it becomes consumed by the Sun.
Paglen spent five years trawling through tens of thousands of images from human history, and talked to artists, scientists, philosophers and campaigners, to select one hundred images that would form The Last Pictures project on board the spacecraft. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) etched the pictures into an atomically stable wafer of silicon, which was mounted to a golden disc, and then attached to the body of the satellite.
The selected pictures now orbiting above us range from early human cave art to the Earthrise picture captured by the Apollo 8 astronauts during their mission to the Moon. They also include the Great Wall of China, a steam train and an atom bomb explosion. There are also images of soldiers wearing First World War gas masks, caged hens in a battery chicken farm and the tiered benches and bloodstained table of an empty Victorian operating theatre; images where you only need a little imagination to picture pain and suffering. But there is also humour. In a lovely knowing twist, one of the images is a backstage still taken from the movie Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
“The images in the Last Pictures are primarily inspired by thinking of uncertainty about the future,” explains Paglen, “trying to think through the ways in which humans have produced crises over and over, whether that’s humanitarian crises or ecological crises and thinking about our uncertain relationship with ideas about progress.”
Snapshots of history
Visions of humanity have travelled further in space, of course. The early 1970s Pioneer 10 and 11 missions to Jupiter and Saturn both carried a plaque on the side with a line drawing of a naked man and woman. The man’s hand is raised in greeting and beneath it there is a diagram of the Solar System, illustrating the origin of the spacecraft. The two Voyager probes – both still going strong after 35 years – carry a far more ambitious message from Earth into interstellar space, including audio messages etched into golden records with instructions about how to play them. Any extra-terrestrial being that succeeds in doing so would not only be treated to the sounds of surf, thunder, whale calls and greetings in 55 languages, they would also hear music from Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, as well as Johnny B Goode by Chuck Berry.
