It was designed to survive the apocalypse, as humanity\u2019s last testament to its failure. But for a while it seemed the \u201cEarth\u2019s Black Box\u201d hadn\u2019t even survived its own planning process.<\/p>\n
Now, five years after it was announced to much fanfare, followed by years of ominous silence, the box is back. Its creators say parts assembly is under way and, in December, the full monolith will be installed near Queenstown on the edge of a remote western Tasmanian airfield.<\/p>\n
When it was first announced that an indestructible doomsday device would be built in a remote part of Tasmania to bear witness to the climate crisis, the news went viral around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cEarth is getting a black box to record events that lead to downfall of civilization,\u201d CNET declared, a headline that would later be quoted on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. \u201cWe\u2019re doomed,\u201d he whispered to the camera.<\/p>\n
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n According to the project\u2019s website, the 16-metre long, four-metre high steel structure \u2013 to be topped with solar panels encased behind glass \u2013 will record \u201cevery step\u201d humanity takes towards climate catastrophe.<\/p>\n \u201cHundreds of data sets, measurements and interactions relating to the health of our planet will be continuously collected and safely stored for future generations,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n \u201cHow the story ends is completely up to us. Only one thing is certain, your actions, inactions, and interactions are now being recorded.\u201d<\/p>\n The project\u2019s inspiration is an aeroplane\u2019s flight recorder, also known as a \u201cblack box\u201d (despite usually being orange), which stores data within crash-proof casing to help investigators piece together the causes of accidents. That was also an Australian invention: the prototype was put together at a government research lab in Melbourne<\/a> in 1954.<\/p>\n The Earth\u2019s Black Box was announced to coincide with the UN\u2019s 2021 Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow.<\/p>\n Digital hard drives were turned on to begin recording data from the talks, to be transferred later to the physical box.<\/p>\n