Several million years from now when future civilizations or aliens or whatever is around then look back on human existence, at least they will know how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear back in 1983. That’s just one of the archives of humanity that is part of the Galactic Legacy Archive–a library of humanity that has been sent to the moon where scientists estimate it will last for billions of years barring an unlikely meteor strike.
The entire library is on a disc made of nickel, a material that never decays or corrodes. It’s made in nanofiche (far smaller than microfiche) and will require a microscope to read, but everyone involved seems fairly certain that sort of magnification will be easily available to future beings who find it. Also in the archive are 25,000 songs, early human cave art paintings and a frozen-in-time version of Wikipedia from 2022 that will offer a concerningly dated look at humanity.
Hopefully this is just one of many such archives that will be sent in the future. In the meantime, in case you are wondering … you can already read how Copperfield did that famous trick here.
