By Ponderer March 21, 2024 1:09 pm Category: Science & Nature
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In about 100,000,000 years, when alien/human archeologists study the lowest level walls of giant canyons on Earth, canyons that dwarf the Grand Canyon of our day, there will be a very sharp, absolutely distinctive demarcation between the epoch that came before us and the epoch that comes after us, That demarcation will be the so-called "Anthropocene Epoch" we currently inhabit. We're even getting to be witness to the very beginning of it.
I have a feeling it's not going to be very thick.
And who knows what will be on top of it. Our layer will be something like the KT-Boundary (pictured below) that was caused by the cataclysmic meteor strike that killed the dinosaurs, and was the starting gate for the next epoch that went in a totally different direction from there.
That meteor did it's thing all in one day. But over just a couple of centuries or so, we're spreading out a far greater amount of energy released into our environment, compared to what was released from the impact of the Chicxulub Asteroid. We're just taking a tiny tad longer in geologic time scales than that meteor did to finish our far larger "collision" with this planet.
So the Chicxulub Asteroid can hold our beer.
Even a few centuries or even a few millennia can look instantaneous on the geologic time scale. So when those future archeologists study the layer we made (the layer representing "us"), it's going to be totally recognizable and distinct. We certainly may well show that KT-Boundary the thing or two, thickness wise.
Homo Sapiens existed on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years before going insane in a virtual flash in epoch time scales. I'd like to consider that part of humanity separate and part of the previous epoch from us, as those archeologists will certainly discover they were. Those humans weren't responsible for what we've done. They may have even been the best of us for all we know. Hope the aliens got samples back then.
"Hmmmm... It looks like these things were doing pretty well for many gleevins of glerxons, building with mud and stones and large plant matter. Totally in tune with their environment and planet. But then all of a sudden... I guess they went totally bonkers... right here..."
As Vonnegut said, "Thanks a lot, big brain!"
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