If We Weren’t the First Industrial Civilization on Earth, Would We Ever Know?
Fossils and objects are unlikely to survive more than a few million years. Searching for chemical traces of industrialization offers an intriguing alternative
The Silurians are a species of lizard-like creature that appeared in the cult science fiction TV show Dr. Who. They achieved industrial expertise about 450 million years ago, long before humans evolved on Earth.
The Silurians are fictional, of course. But the idea of advanced prehistoric life is an intriguing one and raises a variety of interesting questions. Not least of these is this: if an industrial civilization had existed in the past, what traces would it have left?
Today we get an answer thanks to Gavin Schmidt at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York city and Adam Frank at the University of Rochester. These guys have a name for the idea that an industrial civilization may have predated humanity: the Silurian hypothesis. They study the signature that our own civilization is likely to leave behind and ask whether…
