Feo2: Stellar cause of Ordovician Extinction?
Posted by Feo Amante on Jan 08, 2004 at 15:19
(206.72.67.158)Re: Feo: Stellar cause of Ordovician Extinction? (Amaranth Rose)
>"You'd think, though, that those preceeding ueber-civilizations would have left some sort of evidence..."
Well, look at it this way. Books burn and after only a few hundred years, the sturdiest are in advanced stages of disentegration.
How long does leather last?
Now let's look at one of the oldest stone buildings ever recorded - from Mexico. For years it was presumed to be nothing more than a remarkable out cropping of rock. Nope, turns out it is a rapidly detyeriorating stone building, worn by water and wind erosion after standing only a few thousand years.
Look at the pyramids after only a few thousand years. Do you really expect them to be around after a few tens of millions?
Now let's zoom to the current most modern era, ours. With an ever increasing population and a rapid technology, it is no longer considered environmentally (or economically) healthy to make buildings that wil stand for hundreds, let alone thousands of years. Entire shopping plazas, apartment complexes, even stadiums get built and torn down in the space of two decades and less.
How long does drywall last do ya think?
As we go deeper into the computer age, our "stuff" becomes, in many ways, more irrelevant.
We are looking for ways to destroy all of our garbage right now and might use "dsigner bacteria" to do it. We put it in the ground. They find it. No muss no fuss.
Entire movies recorded digitally (and thus, virtually indecipherable) and with the latest bleeding edge tech. Cutting edge tech is so yesterday.
Want the entire Encyclopedia Britannica? I can have it all on an object the size of a stick of gum, with enough room left over to have a nice operating system and searchable database.
In short, and using ourselves as an example, the more advanced we become, the shorter the life of our objects. Model Ts aren't 100 years old, and existing within our current culture, aren't going to be around long either. Piles of junk cars get recycled - they take up too much valuable real estate. And where are these things going to get fossilized since we influence our environment?
Dinosaur hunters have to have a sharp eye to be able to tell the difference between a fossil and a piece of rock.
That is how it is now. Imagine our throw-away / recycle culture in a mere 100 years. Tech moving too rapid to have or even desire a house which will be outdated within 5 years. Why not make them biodegradable? Give them a natural lifetime of 50 years tops.
"Why do you want a 10 year old house anyway? Do you know how much it would cost to get it up to modern specs? Throw some nanos on it and build something new on the dust!
Historical Landmarks? Why waste all that real estate on a bunch of outdated buildings? Holo it for the mensa library and dust it down!
One day someone does some calculations and realizes that we are a few years away from extinction. Good thing we've been developing space faring technology.
We leave behind an infrastructure that will be destroyed by the cataclysm. What doesn't get destroyed would have deteriorated to nothing in thirty years anyway - tops.
Should we leave a monument? Something to say we were here?
For who? If anyone is out there we'll find THEM!
So a few lizards get left behind, criminals perhaps, who knows? Eventually we may find them. We are still finding entire new species in the fossil record, and there is literally tons of stuff we've yet to catalog. From time to time, a discovery is made right inside the drawer of some University archive.
Tomorrow someone at Yale might look at something they pulled out the back room and say,
"You know, this varmint's brain might have been large enough to..."
Follow Ups:
- Re: Feo2: Stellar cause of Ordovician Extinction? Amaranth Rose 08/1 16:05 (1)
- Feo3: Stellar cause of Ordovician Extinction? Feo Amante 08/1 17:50 (0)