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Because it seems pretty ridiculous on it's face. We might not have monuments of an ancient civilization, but we'd expect to see records of an equivalent anthrop
by idiotsecant 2y ago
Because it seems pretty ridiculous on it's face. We might not have monuments of an ancient civilization, but we'd expect to see records of an equivalent anthropocene in the geologic record, similar to what we're making now, more or less. Increased bio-carbon deposits, increased sedimentation from agriculture, etc.
We might as well wonder why scientists didn't consider whether the deposits of iron 60 were put there by mischievous leprechauns.
'scientists' need not consider every crackpot theory because someone on the Internet thinks they should.
- fooker 2y agoIt’s not so ridiculous once you learn that most of the earths crust gets recycled within 500 million years, and more than half gets recycled within a mere 100 million years. That’s why we don’t find fossils everywhere. And if humanity goes extinct today, it would be fairly tricky to find evidence of us in a billion years. It’s of course a non falsifiable hypothesis, so there’s not much we can do. But plenty of people believe in another non falsifiable hypothesis——invisible man in the sky.
- secondcoming 2y agoIf this civilisation was advanced enough to forge fancy isotopes they were probably advanced enough for space travel. They would have visited the Moon and Mars but there's no evidence of that, which is especially suspicious on the Moon as it's geologically inactive.
- snapcaster 2y agoNot sure that's a safe assumption, if the Cold War hadn't happened would we have even gone to the moon?
- secondcoming 2y agoI think the Cold War accelerated the inevitable.
- idiotsecant 2y agoThis isn't really accurate. There are some plates that are extremely geologically stable, location-wise. There are parts of the Canadian shield over 4 billion years old.
- jjk166 2y agoThat is completely false. Most of Earth's continental crust is more than 2.5 billion years old, with the oldest parts being 4 billion years old. Only Earth's oceanic crust is young. We do find fossils everywhere. Not all rock types are conducive to fossil formation, and many parts of Earth are less explored than others, but there exists no region on earth without a fossil record. Evidence of humanity's existence would be clear in the fossil record for billions of years. Reinforced concrete, plastics, artificial ceramics, mined fertilizers, they would all be preserved over geologic timescales. On top of this, intelligence does not simply pop into existence - there would need to be many millions of years of fossil record showing the evolution of some intelligent lineage.
- adolph 2y ago> On top of this, intelligence does not simply pop into existence - there would need to be many millions of years of fossil record showing the evolution of some intelligent lineage. What is the evolutionary gradient leading to “intelligence?” Where is there evidence of .99, .98, .97.. of Human intelligence? Could an intelligent life form not leave a fossil or any other record? Is a material culture always evident where human-level intelligence exists?
- cryptonector 2y agoIt's ridiculous because a past civilization wouldn't have spread iron-60 all over the planet the way a supernova would have. But a fairly advanced civilization could have existed in a fairly local part of the planet that we don't much explore (think of the Sahara desert) and so haven't found the remains of, or it could be buried or under quite a bit of water (if it developed during a glacial period).