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Can We Be Sure We're the First Industrial Civilization on Earth?
In a new paper, Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adam Frank from the University of Rochester ask a provocative question [open, DOI: 10.1017/S1473550418000095] [DX]: Could there have been an industrial civilization on Earth millions of years ago? And if so, what evidence of it would we be able to find today?
The authors first considered what signs of industrial civilization would be expected to survive in the geological record. In our own time, these include plastics, synthetic pollutants, increased metal concentrations, and evidence of large-scale energy use, such as carbon-based fossil fuels. Taken together, they mark what some scientists call the Anthropocene era, in which humans are having a significant and measurable impact on our planet.
The authors conclude, however, that it would be very difficult after tens of millions of years to distinguish these industrial byproducts from the natural background. Even plastic, which was previously thought to be quite resistant, can be degraded by enzymes relatively quickly. Only radiation from nuclear power plants—or from a nuclear war—would be discernible in the geological rock record after such a long time.
Anonymous Coward says "I told you so!" and starts babbling about megaliths.
Related: Homo Sapiens Began Advanced Toolmaking, Pigment Use, and Trade Earlier Than Previously Thought
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 19 2018, @09:16PM (1 child)
That seems like a huge waste of time compared to just genetically engineering them. If you don't want to use the cheat codes by just plopping human intelligence-related genes into the mix, you could also sequence thousands of animals and search for genes that seem to associated with greater intelligence, and then synthesize an embryo with those genes. Same story with regrowing arms and legs: gene expression in embryos (which look similar to one another at early stages) is already an active area of research and a targeted genetic engineering rather than breeding program could created legged whales relatively quickly. We could also work backwards to resurrect the now vestigial features, possibly using DNA from fossils to help (DNA has been recovered from older and older specimens over the years).
Ok, so if we "cheated" as described above, it wouldn't give us the insights we are looking for. In that case we might want to look at other approaches, such as increasing mouse intelligence as much as possible, and then releasing some into the wild to compete against their dumber counterparts and see if they can evolve further. Or creating somewhat random but still guided mutations using a computer. Or finding a way to fully simulate a life form on a computer so we can create an infinite number of accurate virtual species without needing to put all of them into production.
Alternatively, if we crack life extension, an individual scientist could conceivably pursue the intellect cultivation project over a period of centuries, using slower methods.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @10:58PM
Fnnaaarkle!