9 ms·
Marbles (2016)
- SavantIdiot 5y agoI 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.)
- zimpenfish 5y agoThis might be relevant: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arrogance-anthropocene/595795/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arroganc... > 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.
- SavantIdiot 5y agoYES! That is it. Thank you.
- camjohnson26 5y agoCouldn’t we just make a fossil?
- SavantIdiot 5y agoThe 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. Here's the article: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arrogance-anthropocene/595795/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arroganc...
- bombcar 5y agoI don't see how Voyager II is not going to last longer than 16 millions years - what exists to change it?
- Turing_Machine 5y agoEven outside the solar system there are still some particles about, most of which are moving at high velocities. At a minimum, I would expect it to look quite thoroughly sandblasted after 16 million years.
- bombcar 5y agoI suspect the size of the particles and number is very very low - effectively zero once you're far enough away from the Oort Cloud.
- Turing_Machine 5y ago> 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.
- SavantIdiot 5y agoGood 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. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/watchtheskies/meteor_cloud.html https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/watchtheskies/meteor_cl...
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- SamBam 5y agoManages 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.
- m463 5y agoWe should figure out how to combine CD/DVD technology with marbles and then bury spherical data containers.
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- dumbfoundded 5y agoDone: https://www.zmescience.com/research/technology/quartz-disk-5d-storage-52543/ https://www.zmescience.com/research/technology/quartz-disk-5...
- tyingq 5y agoMicrosoft has Project Silica: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-silica/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-sil...
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- Ashanmaril 5y agoWasn't that kinda the idea with the Github arctic code vault?
- Exuma 5y agoNothing like a warm cup of suffocating existential angst to start the day!
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- meowster 5y agoInteresting, 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.
- diplodocusaur 5y agoTLDR: Man loses his marbles from imagined doomsday
- guhcampos 5y agoI 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".
- anaerobicover 5y agoI 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.
- throwaway316943 5y agoArchaeologists no but grave robbers have been around a long time.
- Tuna-Fish 5y agoArchaeologists 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. Ennigaldi-Nanna lived in the 6th century BCE.
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- notional 5y agoHow many cave paintings were just some whiteboard equivalent of hashing out an idea
- pletnes 5y ago
- lxe 5y agoI 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.
- astorgard 5y agoBut destruction of Earth is inevitable! 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. Who is with me? :)
- dhosek 5y agoOlaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0486219623/donhosek http://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.
- gopalv 5y ago> 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". [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2016/07/15/in-motel-of-the-mysteries-america-falls-and-it-doesnt-actually-matter/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2016/07/15/i...
- miglmj 5y agoA 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.
- dekhn 5y agoHere ya go: https://www.amazon.com/Motel-Mysteries-David-Macaulay/dp/0395284252 https://www.amazon.com/Motel-Mysteries-David-Macaulay/dp/039... David Macaulay's illustrations are fantastic.
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- dhosek 5y ago
- the_af 5y agoFYI, the author of this piece is Chris Crawford, author of groundbreaking classic videogames such as Eastern Front (1941) and Balance of Power. His outlook on modern videogames and life in general seems pretty pessimistic.
- tracedddd 5y agoI’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.
- Simon_says 5y agoI imagine he's referring to the Doomsday Argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument). It's popular in certain circles but controversial.
- pitspotter 5y agoHis magnificent 'Dragon Speech' also made it clear that he'd already lost some of his marbles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBrj4S24074 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBrj4S24074
- oasisbob 5y ago> 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.
- Pulcinella 5y agoYeah 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.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoRight. 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.
- elicash 5y ago> 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/ https://www.wired.com/2012/10/the-last-pictures/ This isn't to detract from a great piece. Just adding this thought.
- dumbfoundded 5y agoThat'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. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_boundary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_b...
- ericbarrett 5y agoInteresting 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.
- pixl97 5y agoI 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.
- bombcar 5y agoThe "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.
- dylan604 5y agoIn 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.
- maskedinvader 5y agoI thought micro plastics and chicken bones were going to be the lasting remnants of our current civilizations see [1] and [2]. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chicken-bones-may-be-legacy-our-time-180971027/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chicken-bones-may-... [2] https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/chicken-bones-and-plastic-stone-markers-of-our-time-on-earth https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/chicken-bones-and-plast...
- dnautics 5y agoMicroplastics 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
- yamrzou 5y ago> 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?
- kwhitefoot 5y agoForever 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.
- jl6 5y agoThere’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. Also, pessimism is so lazy.
- kleer001 5y ago> Also, pessimism is so lazy. “There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.” ― Mark Twain ;) Optimism takes faith or creativity, but both are pretty expensive.
- jar3624 5y agoThat's a big deep hole for one small marble. looks like a hole for a concrete pier... dug 8 of those last year. that's some back breaking work ...
- neilv 5y ago> 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. That's much more optimistic than Steinbeck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pearl_(novel)#Summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pearl_(novel)#Summary
- holoduke 5y agoI am gonna melt some pictures and USB sticks inside a marble. Must be doable without destroying it.
- jnellis 5y agoMarbles 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.)
- m463 5y agoIn 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.
- tenebrisalietum 5y agoOk, how do I get a data stream on a marble (lasers?) and how dense can I make it - or how big can I make a marble? Bonus points if I can simply make a glass CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.
- szhu 5y agoI keep coming back to this classic: https://wipp.info/ https://wipp.info/ (edited with shortlink I found -- thanks to whoever made it!) hn discussion about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11851871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11851871
- anonu 5y agoSupposedly 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.