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I'm a geologist and have worked as such academically and professionally. Yes, there would be ample evidence to work out an industrial society jad once been pres

I'm a geologist and have worked as such academically and professionally. Yes, there would be ample evidence to work out an industrial society jad once been present. The research and discovery would take time, but given what we have done to date there would have been time enough to find evidence of a society like ours.

dhoe 3y ago
Do you have thoughts on the reasoning of the paper?
sibeliuss 3y ago
How so? And what would be the timeline?
trompetenaccoun 3y ago
The comment presents no arguments aside from a fallacious one (argument from authority). >but given what we have done to date there would have been time enough to find evidence of a society like ours Geology is a relatively young science. Today's widely accepted facts were laughed at only a few decades ago. Take Wegener's plate tectonics theory: He was ridiculed for it and it only started to become mainstream accepted opinion among geologists after his death, around the 1960s. Your grandparents may still have been taught the land bride idea¹ when they were kids, which nowadays is seen as extremely ridiculous. Yet many today, who may not consciously be aware of these developments, assume that science™ has always known this and that we basically understand earth. We've barely started scratching the surface, in the literal sense. As for hypothetical civilizations lost millions of years ago, there is no way one can rationally claim to know for certain, it depends on so many factors. The Silurian is merely an example, since this is a thought experiment. It could have been much longer ago, it's speculation. But let's assume Silurian it is, and let's say plastics would stay detectable that long (we don't know this for sure). All you have to have is a civilization that didn't invent them, or didn't widely use them. And no nuclear bombs either - hardly inconceivable. Though as an aside, the half-life of Plutonium-239 is only around 24k years! So good luck detecting that. ¹ https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/biogeog/pics/sim1940e.jpg https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/biogeog/pics/sim1940e.j...
- vjulian 3y ago
  “Laughed at” and “ridiculed” seem to be common aspects of a dysfunctional science culture. In that, I always maintain heavy skepticism of loud, and especially media-echoed, claims scientific consensus. I say that generally.
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago
    > “Laughed at” and “ridiculed” seem to be common aspects of a dysfunctional science culture. Then is there any science culture today that isn’t dysfunctional? Any grad student can point to 5 professors who would ridicule plausible ideas.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      Science that's far from politics and monetization seems generally in good shape, at least from a distance? For instance theoretic cosmology has all sorts of 'deviant' theories being widely pursued and researched in a healthy fashion. At least this correlation definitely seems to hold in reverse, where science that is closely tied to monetization or politics seems to be exceptionally intolerant, dysfunctional, and (probably consequently) also prone to absolutely abysmal replication rates.
      - nvm0n2 3y ago
        How is monetization the problem? The biggest issues with non replicable science are all in academia which is grant funded. Corporate labs don't seem to have unusually big issues with non replicable research. Obviously, add if they couldn't replicate it they can't monetize it.
        Jensson 3y ago
        > How is monetization the problem Tobacco funding research to prove smoking is healthy. > The biggest issues with non replicable science are all in academia which is grant funded. Yes, that was his other point, politically charged topics are bound to create bad science. So things related to poverty, intelligence, gender, race, education etc.
chongli 3y ago
Wouldn’t all of our oil & gas and mineral extraction leave huge evidence in the geologic record? Even if some aliens scooped up all traces of civilization from the surface, you’d still have all those emptied wells, water-filled wells, evidence from fracking, open pit mining, and all the rest.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  If you entertain the notion that 55M years ago the PETM was caused by the Silurian civilization then geologically you have to realize that it was only 40M years ago that the Indian plate slammed into the Eurasian plate and caused the uplift of the Himalayas. Mt Everest just didn't exist at all back then. And shield glaciers have carved the continents on a 100k year cycle for at least the past 1M years which would have destroyed all of the surface mining evidence at northern latitudes. A lot changes geologically over those kinds of time periods. Of course most of our oil reserves come from the Mesozoic age (66-252 million years ago) so either the Silurians quickly transitioned away from fossil fuels, or blew themselves up and went extinct before they could extract all of it.
  - dividedbyzero 3y ago
    There could have been a much larger amount of fossil fuels in the ground that was almost used up by the Silurians and now we believe what they left us with is all there ever was.
    - creatonez 3y ago
      This makes me wonder: which methods of resource extraction lead to the complete destruction of evidence that resource existed, and which methods lead to a preservation of evidence? If you insert a deep well into a fossil water aquifer, and only use 10% of it, will it all have evaporated after 5 million years due to exposure to the elements?
- kortilla 3y ago
  No, they are mere surface scratches on the timescale of geologic activity.
_8j50 3y ago
What if it wasn't at our scale but more like late 1800s europe and limited to regions like phoenicia, mesopotamia or the mediterranean coast. Places like alexandria have a ton of history under the city that can't be explored because people live there now but what if what people were building on top of 2-3k years ago was on top of a ruins that existed millenia before their time? When you find roman ruins for example you would stop digging right?
- hef19898 3y ago
  What if said civilization existed in the hollow earth? Obviously, once you reach etruscan dinosaurs you'd stop digging!
  - _8j50 3y ago
    Maybe they have tech to endure the heat by transforming it into cooling energy, you never know lol (jk).
dmos62 3y ago
Do you have arguments, as a previous professional and academic geologist?

dhoe 3y ago

Do you have thoughts on the reasoning of the paper?

sibeliuss 3y ago

How so? And what would be the timeline?

trompetenaccoun 3y ago

The comment presents no arguments aside from a fallacious one (argument from authority). >but given what we have done to date there would have been time enough to find evidence of a society like ours Geology is a relatively young science. Today's widely accepted facts were laughed at only a few decades ago. Take Wegener's plate tectonics theory: He was ridiculed for it and it only started to become mainstream accepted opinion among geologists after his death, around the 1960s. Your grandparents may still have been taught the land bride idea¹ when they were kids, which nowadays is seen as extremely ridiculous. Yet many today, who may not consciously be aware of these developments, assume that science™ has always known this and that we basically understand earth. We've barely started scratching the surface, in the literal sense. As for hypothetical civilizations lost millions of years ago, there is no way one can rationally claim to know for certain, it depends on so many factors. The Silurian is merely an example, since this is a thought experiment. It could have been much longer ago, it's speculation. But let's assume Silurian it is, and let's say plastics would stay detectable that long (we don't know this for sure). All you have to have is a civilization that didn't invent them, or didn't widely use them. And no nuclear bombs either - hardly inconceivable. Though as an aside, the half-life of Plutonium-239 is only around 24k years! So good luck detecting that. ¹ https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/biogeog/pics/sim1940e.jpg https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/biogeog/pics/sim1940e.j...

vjulian 3y ago
“Laughed at” and “ridiculed” seem to be common aspects of a dysfunctional science culture. In that, I always maintain heavy skepticism of loud, and especially media-echoed, claims scientific consensus. I say that generally.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  > “Laughed at” and “ridiculed” seem to be common aspects of a dysfunctional science culture. Then is there any science culture today that isn’t dysfunctional? Any grad student can point to 5 professors who would ridicule plausible ideas.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    Science that's far from politics and monetization seems generally in good shape, at least from a distance? For instance theoretic cosmology has all sorts of 'deviant' theories being widely pursued and researched in a healthy fashion. At least this correlation definitely seems to hold in reverse, where science that is closely tied to monetization or politics seems to be exceptionally intolerant, dysfunctional, and (probably consequently) also prone to absolutely abysmal replication rates.
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      How is monetization the problem? The biggest issues with non replicable science are all in academia which is grant funded. Corporate labs don't seem to have unusually big issues with non replicable research. Obviously, add if they couldn't replicate it they can't monetize it.
      - Jensson 3y ago
        > How is monetization the problem Tobacco funding research to prove smoking is healthy. > The biggest issues with non replicable science are all in academia which is grant funded. Yes, that was his other point, politically charged topics are bound to create bad science. So things related to poverty, intelligence, gender, race, education etc.

chongli 3y ago

Wouldn’t all of our oil & gas and mineral extraction leave huge evidence in the geologic record? Even if some aliens scooped up all traces of civilization from the surface, you’d still have all those emptied wells, water-filled wells, evidence from fracking, open pit mining, and all the rest.

lamontcg 3y ago
If you entertain the notion that 55M years ago the PETM was caused by the Silurian civilization then geologically you have to realize that it was only 40M years ago that the Indian plate slammed into the Eurasian plate and caused the uplift of the Himalayas. Mt Everest just didn't exist at all back then. And shield glaciers have carved the continents on a 100k year cycle for at least the past 1M years which would have destroyed all of the surface mining evidence at northern latitudes. A lot changes geologically over those kinds of time periods. Of course most of our oil reserves come from the Mesozoic age (66-252 million years ago) so either the Silurians quickly transitioned away from fossil fuels, or blew themselves up and went extinct before they could extract all of it.
- dividedbyzero 3y ago
  There could have been a much larger amount of fossil fuels in the ground that was almost used up by the Silurians and now we believe what they left us with is all there ever was.
  - creatonez 3y ago
    This makes me wonder: which methods of resource extraction lead to the complete destruction of evidence that resource existed, and which methods lead to a preservation of evidence? If you insert a deep well into a fossil water aquifer, and only use 10% of it, will it all have evaporated after 5 million years due to exposure to the elements?
kortilla 3y ago
No, they are mere surface scratches on the timescale of geologic activity.

_8j50 3y ago

What if it wasn't at our scale but more like late 1800s europe and limited to regions like phoenicia, mesopotamia or the mediterranean coast. Places like alexandria have a ton of history under the city that can't be explored because people live there now but what if what people were building on top of 2-3k years ago was on top of a ruins that existed millenia before their time? When you find roman ruins for example you would stop digging right?

hef19898 3y ago
What if said civilization existed in the hollow earth? Obviously, once you reach etruscan dinosaurs you'd stop digging!
- _8j50 3y ago
  Maybe they have tech to endure the heat by transforming it into cooling energy, you never know lol (jk).

dmos62 3y ago

Do you have arguments, as a previous professional and academic geologist?