Time Capsules: Would You Like Your Own?

Every once and awhile, you hear of a city that buried a time capsule, and years later most are just forgotten and never discovered. In some cases, I have read that they just forgot where they were put.

Other bits of knowledge like the Kennedy autopsy results were sealed, not to be revealed until years, after the assassination. Over 10,000 pages of the investigation remain classified til 2017.

We have secret documents, that have been hid from public view that go back to World War II, and perhaps earlier hidden in secret archives of the State Department, or some other mysterious location. Even the city of Lynchburg Virginia has a time capsule.

If there was a time capsule, I would want to open it would be the Library of Alexandria. Who knows what could be hidden those scrolls? Would history be rewritten, could be, but unfortunately all was destroyed in a fire.

How many time capsules are in existence today waiting to be opened? No one knows for sure. There is one that was started in 1936 and sealed in 1940 called the crypt of civilization.

"In the November 1936 issue of Scientific American magazine, Dr. Thornwell Jacobs described his plan to create a permanent record - a time capsule - of what life was like on Earth for any future inhabitants or visitors. "

"Because the first known date in history, 4241 B.C., was 6177 years previous, Jacobs suggested that the Crypt be sealed until 6177 years have passed - thus setting the date for the Crypt's reopening in the year 8113."

When and if this crypt is opened, we will have truly lived in the middle ages, and if there are people around then, they will be amazed about how primitive we were. Or perhaps how advanced, if they were bombed back into the stone age.

Sometime in the far off future long after our sun and solar system has met its fate, there might be a chance discovery by some unknown creature of the universe of this:

"On board the unmanned spacecraft Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 is a plaque with a pictorial message from mankind. The plaque shows the figures of a man and a woman along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft. It serves as a kind of interstellar "message in a bottle. '''

We may be thinking too highly of ourselves, that any creature would be interested in our primitive existence. There are doubts that this "message in a bottle" will ever be found. Yet NASA is confident it will survive long after the light in our solar system goes out.

But, before the party is over and someone turns out the lights, you can have your own personal time capsule preserved in an email, and returned to you up to twenty years later. So what do you want to say to yourself 20 years later? Here is the link for your own personal time capsule.

image credit: Wiki Encyclopedia