BURYING a time capsule with the expressed purpose of communicating with future generations is a pretty eccentric thing to do. It is also an activity that appears to be unique to the 20th-century. Did the Elizabethans or the Victorians bury time capsules in an attempt to communicate with us?
But if burying a time capsule seems an odd thing to do, burying a time capsule in the ground of another world is even odder. But that’s the plan of a group of scientists who are trying to persuade NASA and ESA to put a message on the Cassini spacecraft when it heads for Saturn’s giant, fogbound moon Titan in 1998. The hope is that the message, encapsulated in letters only a few micrometres high on a coin-sized disc of diamond, will be recovered and read by humans – or, indeed, any life forms – who land on Titan in a few centuries time (see This Week).
Now, anyone who buries a message for people to read in the future must have faith that there will indeed be a future with people to read it. Paradoxically, there has never been a time when the people of this planet stood in greater need of reassurance about the future. Perhaps that’s why, in the late 20th century, some people feel the curious compulsion to bury time capsules and to establish a one-way communication with the future.
If so, those who would put a time capsule on another world are providing the ultimate expression of that compulsion. They have faith that not only shall we overcome poverty, AIDS, the pressing problems of overpopulation, global warming, pollution and all the rest, but that we will actually thrive, moving out into space and one day reaching the remote outpost of Titan.
Star Trek, as many people have remarked, is a phenomenal worldwide success partly because it offers a vision of a long-term future for the human race. A message capsule left on Titan for explorers from Earth to retrieve at the beginning of the 23rd century could be equally symbolic. Let’s hope that in May, when the decision must be made, NASA and ESA decide so too.