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Have these people not seen how much garbage we leave lying around!? A lot of artificial materials last far longer than natural materials. Pure metals especiall
by jiggawatts 4y ago
Have these people not seen how much garbage we leave lying around!?
A lot of artificial materials last far longer than natural materials. Pure metals especially can last a very long time, like gold jewellery, or even just aluminium.
Not to mention "forever chemicals", large scale concrete construction, mining, etc...
We'll be finding evidence of our presence on Earth for a billion years or more, whether we like it or not.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoMost evidence would be gone after a few million years. Any metal that oxidizes would go first, aluminium included. Concrete would disappear with weathering, earth quakes, and even just by the action of plants. Huge open pit mines or mountain top removal would be weathered away and filled in with sediments. Plastics decompose and chemicals are diluted and dispersed or consumed by microbes. Gold jewelry may last a long time in the right conditions but if it's subject to any kind of motion it will deform and wear away since it is much softer than the grains of sand that would be rubbing against it. Everything would end up buried under layers of sediment or higher sea levels or even subducted into the mantle and melted.
- jiggawatts 4y agoWe’re finding organic remains like skeletons hundreds of millions of years later! Manufactured goods made of durable materials would certainly be just as easy to find. It’s simple logic.
- kadoban 4y agoWe find _extremely few_ organic remains that got ungodly lucky and are still recognizable after so long. Most "durable" goods are durable only on human scales of time, and if anything are less likely to survive on longer time scales.