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A discussion I saw in another thread on HN yesterday was how we have far more knowledge of what life was like in the 2nd millennium BC as opposed to the 1st millennium BC as there was a change from clay tablets to papyrus.

The article mentions microfilm which makes me wonder if a Carrington event ever blows us the fuck out what we will have left. There is such a stupendous amount of history and knowledge stored in FAANG servers alone I wonder what use all their data is even if 100% of it is in an EMP hardened environment and the tools to push it around the globe are outside of it.

I don't think it is fully appreciated that earths magnetic field was weakening at 5% per century and is now weakening at 5% per decade! since 1990 [0] and not only that but magnetic excursions are linked to global extinction events [1] and we are currently experiencing a magnetic excursion in the north and south pole! [2] with all signs pointing to an extremely fast polar flip (can occur in under 100 years [3]) what are we doing to protect our planetary cultural, intellectual, spiritual (and whatever other kind) heritage when the full might of the sun is no longer being glanced off by our magnetic field?

[0] https://www.livescience.com/46694-magnetic-field-weakens.htm...

[1] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...

[2] https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/ - (please click 'modeled historical track of poles' to see just how quickly things are escalating - and if you need a better visualisation choose between mercator/arctic/antartic on the far right side)

[3] https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/10/14/earths-magnetic-field-c...