This article was taken from the June 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Out In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, nearly 6,000km from anymajor landmass, a team of international researchers is trying to create the first digital replica of an island -- from ocean currents and human demographics down to the genes of its species. "Our mission is to put the island of Moorea on to a supercomputer, so we can perform virtual experiments that time and ethical limitations don't allow in the real world," explains Neil Davies, executive director of Berkeley's Gump Research Station. The model could be used to predict everything from the impact of increased fishing to the spread of mosquito-borne disease, and how to prevent it. Nothing as comprehensive has been tried on this scale. "The closest parallel is the modelling of simple organisms such as the fruit fly," Davies says. "That's been very powerful, as many of the lessons from the fruit fly apply to humans. The same will probably be true of Moorea in relation to the planet."
The project benefits from a four-year head start in the Moorea Biocode Project, which aimed to sequence a section of DNA from every species bigger than 1mm, although that still leaves the vast microbial diversity, the coral reefs, physical landscape, water chemistry, human demographics and much more. "We'd hope to have the primitive 1.0 avatar built in the next three to five years," Davies says. "But this is just the beginning. I expect someone will still be working on this in 50 years." And after that? A digital avatar of the entire planet. "It's vastly more complex, but we're handling all the scientific disciplines that are needed," Davies says. "If this works at the level of an island, it should work at the level of a planet."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
