The Clock of the Long Now, designed by Daniel Hillis and the Long Now Foundation, is a clock designed to run accurately without interruption and maintenance for 10,000 years. Find out more about how it works here and here and here.
Consider:
The half-life of enriched uranium (Uranium-235) is 704 million years. That of depleted uranium (Uranium-238) is 4.5 billion years. All of the nuclear waste that has ever been created by humans--that continues to be created at a rate of over 3,000 tons per year in the US alone--will continue to exist and be deadly for longer than the life of the sun.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (above) is a storage facility in southeastern New Mexico designed to "safely" store nuclear waste. This site is only for "so called low- and midlevel waste," but its contents, many thousands of tons of contaminated clothing, building materials, and equipment, are and will remain poisonous beyond any future we can image (Weisman).
The longest continuously-existing civilization, at upwards of 3,500 years, is that of China. Suffice to say that the poison filling the ground will likely outlast any remnant of the civilization that put it there. According to its federal mandate, the operational performance period for the WIPP is 10,000 years.
10,000 Years Activity
After we complete the activity, we can listen to this 99% Invisible episode, which tells the true story of solving this problem.
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