> if we’re very, very lucky and tales of a glorious civilization somehow persist that long — who put it there.
I just finished reading "Motel of the Mysteries" [1] and the Treasures section of that talks about the sacred seal of "Do Not Disturb" & the pendant made or rubber (it's a tub stopper).
At best, this is just going to confuse the hell out of every archaeologist who interprets this as a "religious act".
A teacher read us this book in elementary school and I've unsuccessfully been trying to track this book for years. Such an interesting way to think about the world around us, how it will be perceived, and the degree to which we cannot be sure of the accuracy of our perceptions of the past.
There's also Robert Nathan’s “Digging the Weans.” The PDF from Harper’s used to be available to non-subscribers, but there are unauthorized copies of the PDF available to anyone who googles it.
> Well, the pyramids will last a long, long time. If there were more rain in Egypt, they’d erode away in a few tens of thousands of years, but no matter what, they’re going to be here for a long, long time. Most of our other stuff, however, won’t last a thousand years. Except for marbles.
I remember reading a piece about a decade ago about how the last trace of human civilization that will (likely) survive, for BILLIONS of years, are our satellites. Actually, just found it: https://www.wired.com/2012/10/the-last-pictures/
This isn't to detract from a great piece. Just adding this thought.
That's a cool thought. I always imagined it be something like a the K-T boundary (1), a thin layer of rock that looks different than all of the other layers.
Interesting proposition regarding satellites. I have to wonder, though. What about:
Debris from satellites breaking up, causing a very slow Kessler-type syndrome—over these time scales there will certainly be millions of close encounters with random objects
Kinetic changes from similar gravity perturbations, leading to highly eccentric orbits which then decay into the atmosphere
Solar flares—I imagine in the next few hundred million years we'll get some doozies, with similar kinetic effects
Solar expansion—in about a billion years, the Sun will have expanded enough that liquid water can't exist on Earth's surface anymore. Won't that massively expand the atmosphere and drag satellites down a lot faster, even at geosynchronous orbits?
I can definitely see "millions," but "billions" feels hyperbolic.
I think that you thinking of near earth sats. There are many others like the solar observatory that are much farther out and are unlikely to be disturbed by anything in the gigayear range.
You mean the SDO [0]? It's still in geostationary orbit. Which, of course, is much farther out than LEO, and orders of magnitude less affected by the Earth's atmo, but still interacts with it. Heck, even the Moon is probably affected by it [1].
Perhaps a solar orbit—I didn't consider that when I wrote my first comment. But the plates described in the article aren't going there, they're going to GEO.
I’ve read a few of his other entries from when they were shared here. It’s interesting that someone can have such a different baseline view on reality than I (for example, the opening statement that humanity will just end itself in a couple centuries) but the posts are enjoyable nonetheless.
I think information and civilization has progressed far beyond the possibility of a total loss of all our knowledge, barring a complete extinction or a destruction of earth.
Even if we manage not to destroy ourselves in the next hundred thousand years, we still have to deal with some "soft" and "hard limits".
First we have comets/asteroids impacts. I guess we might have the technology to deflect them in the next 5000 years or so, so this shouldn't be a problem.
Gamma ray burst, close super nova explosions and glacial periods would severely damage half of Earth, but, again, as long as this doesn't happen in the next 5000 years or so, I think we will develop the technology to recover from that also.
Let's fast forward to 600 million years where things start to get interesting: the level of carbon dioxide will fall below the level needed to sustain photosynthesis... So no more plants. But if we are still around here by then, I guess this should also not be a problem as we will be able to synthesize whatever chemical we need.
In 1000 million years the solar luminosity will be 10% higher than at present. This will cause the atmosphere to become a "moist greenhouse", resulting in a runaway evaporation of the oceans. Hmmm... 1000 million years is enough for us to come with a solution for this, but who knows?
In 2500 million years Earth will lose its magnetosphere.
In 4000 million years the surface of Earth will melt from heat.
In 7500 million years the Sun will absorb Earth.
So... if we want to preserve man kind I would say that, in order to "play it safe" before things get more complicated, we have around 500 million years to escape Earth and ten times that to escape the solar system.
I'm quite convinced that we will manage to do both. I'm also pretty sure we will be there to witness it: we just have to hang on for ~50 years or so until we get functional cryogenic chambers; from there it is just a matter to tell the operators to wake us up in 5000 years once immortality is achieved.
This is an interesting discussion point. There are things worse than death and if you're frozen then you won't have a chance to escape them. Basically if you think I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is possible then you need to consider cryogenic freezing somewhat more carefully.
You're very optimistic. I think it's more likely that we lose technological society in the next hundred years or so due to environmental destruction and the resulting wars and collapse. Recovering might be possible, but it will take a pretty long time.
Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Menhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0486219623/donhosek presents one possible future history on this kind of time scale. It is very much a product of the 1930s though, with rather disturbing racism, sexism and the kind of casual anti-Semitism that the rise of Hitler made impossible. Once he gets away from contemporary times, though, that tends to fade away and it’s very much a memorable book.
I love the idea of trolling future generations and have thought about a couple methods in the past.
Yet, it makes me think: are we being trolled by past generations? What inexplicable wonders of archeology might just be someone thinking "whoever finds this will be so confused they'll go crazy".
People are diverse enough that with a few millennia, probably no need to troll.
There's an archaeological site near here, vaguely described in most publications. If you can get your hands on some of the original field reporting, you learn that one of the finds was a burial site where the head of the deceased was replaced with that of a canine.
I got to go on a dig a few years ago. We were excavating a site that likely was once the location of a large building. My supervisor pointed out a long, shallow, obviously man-made cut in the bedrock that ended abruptly and had no obvious purpose. He said his theory is someone screwed up and started cutting the foundation in the wrong spot.
It was comforting to realize that none of my mistakes are likely to be preserved for the next few millennia.
We're renovating a house to move into. I want to put a fake but realistic skull in the concrete that will get poured for some stairs. My wife disapproves. I’ll have to do it stealthily.
(Recommendations of a good fake skull that’s not too expensive are welcome.)
When I renovated behind my kitchen cabinets I wrote my email address and "clue 9 of 11. You've almost found the $5000. Email a photo of this clue to this address for the next clue!"
If someone ever does I'll ask them for clue 8 and then wonder if they destroy the house looking.
What’s the motivation in causing suffering for a person you don’t know?
You won’t even see them go through it. Is the fun in imagining them searching high and low for these clues made more pleasurable because it might actually happen?
I understand traditional revenge. An eye for an eye and so on. But why does someone want to create trouble presumably for the nice young couple who bought your house with the slightly tired kitchen?
Yes, I hate that motivation. More trivially there are people who enjoy baiting and winding other people up. Why?
I don't know. However I think I know the reason it's permitted to exist: because it makes its victims more resilient. The troll knows this at some level so his conscience is relatively untroubled.
Interesting take. I assumed trolls knew it was wrong and don’t care. You found an interesting logic where they might believe they were eventually a force for good
Fair enough. Maybe trolling is a value laden term with negative connotations that don’t apply here.
What’s the thrill of the practical joke?
To share my POV, I never really found the banana peel or the pie in the face amusing. Guy fell down. She got hit in face. Seems bad. I wouldn’t enjoy receiving it.
This joke seems 99% invisible. Like most likely overwhelming likely, no one sees it. In some rare cases they find it and take some action. Maybe look for the money. Maybe email you.
If they look for it without contacting you, you never know.
Are we playing for the tiny corner case where they contact you?
Or the pleasure of telling people we did this funny thing?
Alright guys, so we’ve got the herd, say, over here. I’ll just sketch’em real quick on the wall so we’re on the same rock here. So at first, a couple of the youngsters chase them down the ravine, which is this crack in the rock over there. Now, after they round the corner, some of our more experienced guys flank them with spears. After running uphill over there, they won’t be rested and we should have a nice meal tonight. Thoughts?
If someone writes on a whiteboard with a permanent marker, immediately black it out with a dry erase marker. Then wipe it off.
The dry erase marker's solvent will release the permanent marker ink.
I doubt this was all that common, because it requires the pranker to have the idea of actual archaeologists to play the prank on, and that isn't something that's been present in all societies across history.
Archaeologists aren't that new either. The oldest museum we know of was curated by Ennigaldi-Nanna, the daughter of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
Why do we think she created a museum? When the palace was excavated, dozens of neatly displayed artifacts from widely different eras and places were found. That alone wouldn't be conclusive, except for the fact that the artifacts had labels detailing their origins. In three languages.
Even better: lets seed Mars with life and leave an actual mysterious buried or maybe orbiting artifact for future intelligences to find should any evolve there.
Then the Martian equivalent of Giorgio Tsoukalos, the Ancient Aliens guy with the crazy hair, would be right.
There’s really no need to make an extra effort to bury anything. The world’s landfills surely already contain more than enough weird durable objects to puzzle future archaeologists.
> So now let’s go back to our marble. It is completely impervious to any chemical attack
Isn't this a wildly misguided assertion? As any antique bottle collector will tell you, bottles underground WILL corrode, and the corrosion is very obvious in less than a century, depending on soil conditions.
Granted that's soda-glass, and there are many types of glass, but just because a bottle can hold sulfuric acid for a few decades doesn't mean all glass will last centuries.
Yeah glass is not that resistant to alkaline conditions over long periods of time. You can, of course, perform chemical reactions in them using highly concentrated base, but you don’t want to leave important features in contact with it for long periods of time. E.g. you can wash your scientific glassware with base, but you don’t want to leave it in there to soak. Otherwise the ground-glass joints (rough patches of etched glass used to help connect glassware together) can be corroded and smoothed out.
Right. He says that glass is the same as quartz, but it isn't. It's got other stuff in it to reduce the melting point and improve other working characteristics. Most everyday glass is soda-lime glass or (less commonly than in the past) lead glass ("crystal"). Lab glass is often borosilicate glass. All are pretty durable, but not anything remotely approaching pure quartz.
The "civilization will collapse and the remainders will be hunter-gatherers" seems some weird form of the "dark ages" mythos that is certainly attractive to many. I wonder why that is.
In the back of my mind, not seriously more on the your top 10 friends are your zombie apocalypse team mind, that learning non-techy skills are worth while. Won't need any damn lawyers except to sacrifices when the zombie hordes get too close, but doctors would be good. Knowing how to grow food would be useful. Making clothes would be nice as well as being able to build things. Still trying to decide if at that point UI/UX people are lumped in with the lawyers, but marketing/PR people might go before the lawyers.
In otherwords, learn some hobbies that might just be a fun thing now, but makes you invaluable when civilization collapses.
Manages to be both extremely sweet and extremely pessimistic at the same time.
I wouldn't put even money on the chances that homo sapiens will go back to pre-modern times within ten thousand years. However, the probability of some civilization-ending event within that time (nukes, viruses, aliens, a giant asteroid) are certainly not zero either.
I can't recall the source (SciAm?), but I recall reading an article claiming that the longest impact humans can make is 16 million years. And that refers to radioactive isotopes. We do not have the technology to make anything that can last longer than that.
(I can't even figure out how to phrase the question to google for the article.)
Good question. The author didn't explore deep space. I believe it was related to terrestrial objections, but that is an interesting thought. Since nothing has ever been that far out I think it is quite impossible to say for certain, but I guess there's no reason to assume the microparticles per cubic meter are any different than inside the solar system.
NASA talks about space dust here [1] and how it literally tore apart Mariner. But maybe that is just dust orbiting the sun and not something interstellar.
> I suspect the size of the particles and number is very very low
The number is indeed low, though the size can be anything from a molecule to full-sized planet.
On the other hand, 16 million years is a very very long time, and 17 km/s (the current velocity of Voyager 2) is a respectable velocity.
Even small particles will take the "new" right off something at that velocity. By comparison, the velocity of a 5.56 mm rifle bullet is only about 1 km/s.
> But the longest-lived radioisotope from radioactive fallout, iodine-129, has a half-life of less than 16 million years. If there were a nuclear holocaust in the Triassic, among warring prosauropods, we wouldn’t know about it.
The problem is that fossils are incredibly statistically rare. It is highly unlikely we could pick the right geological location over that time scale? How do you know where a continent is going to be in 10's of millions of years? Perhaps we could map out where plates are moving, but are we accurate enough to avoid tectonic plate subduction, erosion, volcanoes, floods, ice ages...? I think we take the statistical rarity of fossils for granted because they permeate culture: the chances of something being fossilized for hundreds of millions of years are practically nil. But not zero.
Marbles are buried in every yard that had children and will not be rare to future civilizations. They were very popular. Keys are the second most found item buried in yards. This was a recent discussion in r/gardening.
I can attest to this as I've torn out an entire front lawn and topsoil from a 1964 tract home, sifted every square inch of it through 1/4" hardware cloth to build raise beds for vegetables. The findings were, in order, so many marbles, over half dozen keys, little plastic dinosaurs or other toys, two 9mm slugs (likely from people shooting up into the air as they were not deformed.)
In the old days it was arrowheads or civil war bullets.
I wonder if keys are a blip in the timeline, like analog radio transmissions, which gradually are replaced by high-information signals that are akin to random noise.
> But one day in the far future, I hope, somebody will notice one of my little marbles, pick it up, and wonder what it is, how it was made and even -- if we’re very, very lucky and tales of a glorious civilization somehow persist that long -- who put it there.
> Let us start with an assumption that most of us already suspect to be true: that civilization will not survive more than a few centuries into the future.
If no big new innovations are made (e.g. finding a way to exploit previousely unused raw materials), how long will the current earth reserves allow technology to last?
Forever I think. Global population is projected to peak at about 10 billion and technology is getting more efficient all the time. The planet receives vastly more energy than we need even if everyone on the planet has a European standard of living. Everything we make can be recycled even with the technology we already have so long as we can expend enough energy. If our species dies out it will not be for want of stuff but because we are unwilling to work together.
Microplastics are too tempting of a carbon source for bacteria. I would be surprised if polystyrene and polyethylene degradation genes don't start to run rampant in the global bacterial pangenome via horizontal transfer in the next 100 years
Interesting, but I fear they'll be too small and buried by too much sediment. Unless he burries a hundred of them in the same location, it will probably never be found, or if found, just an insignificant oddity.
Supposedly what you put on the web is eternal. So maybe in many centuries from now our cyborg eyes will cross reference with the marble in your picture simply bring up your blog post.
I just finished reading "Motel of the Mysteries" [1] and the Treasures section of that talks about the sacred seal of "Do Not Disturb" & the pendant made or rubber (it's a tub stopper).
At best, this is just going to confuse the hell out of every archaeologist who interprets this as a "religious act".
[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2016/07/15/i...