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Fossil fuels are even more accidental than that. Most of them come from the fact that woody materials evolved long before anything evolved that could break them
by api 7y ago
Fossil fuels are even more accidental than that. Most of them come from the fact that woody materials evolved long before anything evolved that could break them down. Wood was the original plastic.
It's quite possible that we stand where we are as a result of a very long series of very unlikely events and conditions.
But we really just don't know.
- quaquaqua1 7y agoHope we find out someday. The laws of physics are cruel-- maybe someday we can see everything in a 100M light year radius to us is devoid of life, but theres still the other billions of light years where trillions of dice rolls are happening for a chance at civilization. I am reminded of those few galaxies in Bootes Void who legitimately wouldn't be too wrong in thinking their galaxy was the observable universe until they could see beyond the dark.
- dilyevsky 7y agoWhy would Boote Void residents not see all other galaxies? It’s just a relatively low density space nothing special about it. You’re probably thinking of Barnard 68 - dark nebula, and it’s too small to host a galaxy.
- tyingq 7y agoSans fossil fuels, wouldn't we just have figured out how to scale something else? Ethanol maybe?
- api 7y agoI think maybe we would have had slow industrialization until we figured out fission, solar PV, and good batteries.