WEBVTT - The Silurian Hypothesis

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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<v Speaker 2>Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's

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<v Speaker 2>Chuck and this is stuff you should know. It's just

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<v Speaker 2>Josh and Chuck today. Yeah, that's all right, don't freak out, Chuck.

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<v Speaker 2>We're gonna make it. Just sorry.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm just glad we're recording. This is just a little

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<v Speaker 1>inside baseball here. This is our third attempt at this recording. Sessh.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well you diffuse my inside joke to you that

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<v Speaker 2>I didn't have enough time to prepare for this episode.

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<v Speaker 1>So, yeah, my internet went out because of a windstorm

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<v Speaker 1>last week, and then we were like, you were kind

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<v Speaker 1>enough to be like, we'll just do it next Thursday.

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<v Speaker 1>And then yesterday your internet had problems, and I said, well,

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<v Speaker 1>let's just do it tomorrow morning, because you know, Friday

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<v Speaker 1>morning at eight fifty five is when the voice is

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<v Speaker 1>in perfect shape.

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<v Speaker 2>Right, which was also very kind of you. So we've

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<v Speaker 2>been kind to one another throughout this ordeal.

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<v Speaker 1>At least you got to do that. People. If you

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<v Speaker 1>want to stay married.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, definitely, you want the other person to hold your hand,

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<v Speaker 2>you'd better be kind.

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<v Speaker 1>But I'm excited to finally and you know, probably it

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<v Speaker 1>was probably good that I had a lot more time

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<v Speaker 1>with this, because this is one of those sort of

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<v Speaker 1>thought experimentee, get your brain in the right frame of

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<v Speaker 1>mind kind of episodes, and we love doing these, and

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<v Speaker 1>this is going to be a good one.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, for sure. So what we're talking about today, Chuck,

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<v Speaker 2>is the Silurian hypothesis, which if I could do anything

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<v Speaker 2>with this thing, I would rename it. I'd be like, guys,

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<v Speaker 2>that was a terrible decision.

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<v Speaker 1>I keep listening everybody, so right, I promise is interesting.

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<v Speaker 2>So the whole thing came out of we'll explain in

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<v Speaker 2>a second, but we should probably talk about where it

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<v Speaker 2>came from and why we don't like this name. The

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<v Speaker 2>whole thing came out of a meeting between a guy

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<v Speaker 2>named Adam Frank who's an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester,

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<v Speaker 2>and a guy named Gavin Schmidt, who's the big wig

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<v Speaker 2>director for the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a NASA joint. Yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>and Adam Frank went to Gavin Schmidt and said, hey,

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<v Speaker 2>I'm trying to figure out if we could find ancient

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<v Speaker 2>defunct civilizations elsewhere in you know, off of Earth. What

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<v Speaker 2>would I look for? And the reason he was doing this.

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<v Speaker 2>This is a it's an answer to the family paradox,

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<v Speaker 2>where is everybody? Well, one answer is, well, they were here,

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<v Speaker 2>but now they all died out. So Adam Frank is

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<v Speaker 2>looking for evidence that they were there. And Gavin Schmidt said,

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<v Speaker 2>let me just stop you right there and up the

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<v Speaker 2>ante here.

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<v Speaker 1>Well, actually, you know what Gavin Schmidt said. What he said,

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<v Speaker 1>let me tell you something, Professor Frank hey, and Professor

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<v Speaker 1>Frank said, oh god, I had a dime for every

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<v Speaker 1>time somebody did that, right, so so close. Yeah, Schmidt

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<v Speaker 1>was like, hey, buddy, would you say I'll one.

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<v Speaker 2>Up, you'll up at okay, up.

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<v Speaker 1>The ante here? What if it's planet Earth? And what

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<v Speaker 1>if there were ancient civilizations here? My friend? Yeah, and

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<v Speaker 1>they said check please.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Adam Frank just vomited directly all over Gavin Smith's desk,

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<v Speaker 2>very famously.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I mean, I think they sort of started chatting

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<v Speaker 1>about this thing, and we should point out that, you

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<v Speaker 1>know what we're gonna They wrote a paper. We'll get

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<v Speaker 1>to that in a second, and they named it Silurian hypothesis.

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<v Speaker 1>But neither one of them think like, oh I think

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<v Speaker 1>this is what happened. It's more, you know, it's a

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<v Speaker 1>thought experiment. It's what happens when two remarkably intelligent people

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<v Speaker 1>get together sometimes and take LSD.

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<v Speaker 2>One of the other things about it that I think

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<v Speaker 2>makes it worthwhile too. First of all, these guys are

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<v Speaker 2>the first scientists to seriously explore the idea which you

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<v Speaker 2>can apply science to anything like that, and sure they

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<v Speaker 2>even though they don't think it's correct, they don't rule

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<v Speaker 2>it out. Yeah, you can't rule it out. There's not

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<v Speaker 2>enough information to rule it out right.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

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<v Speaker 2>But the other thing that it does is that it

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<v Speaker 2>provides kind of like a guide to see what we're

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<v Speaker 2>doing now, what we're going to leave in the far

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<v Speaker 2>future as well.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, absolutely so. I imagine they went to another venue,

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<v Speaker 1>they went to a bar afterward to have a drink,

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<v Speaker 1>keep this party going, and they were like, well, you know,

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<v Speaker 1>there's been enough time for something like this to have happened,

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<v Speaker 1>because when you look at the fossil record, the oldest

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<v Speaker 1>thing that we know of is a cyanobacteria fossil that's

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<v Speaker 1>about three and a half billion years old that was

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<v Speaker 1>from the ocean. And if you're talking about complex life,

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<v Speaker 1>then you only have to go back about five hundred

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<v Speaker 1>and forty million years ago to the Cambrian explosion. So

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<v Speaker 1>like anything beyond that was you know, stuff like soundo

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<v Speaker 1>bacteria that we know of at least, so any prior

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<v Speaker 1>intelligent species wouldn't theoretically be older than that Cambrian explosion.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they call it an explosion because everything went from

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<v Speaker 2>single celled organisms like you were saying, to like basically

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<v Speaker 2>all the types of animals on the planet today. Yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>just like it exploded. It's just the best name for it.

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<v Speaker 2>It really can't add to that. But there's another guy,

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<v Speaker 2>another character we need to add here, and his name

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<v Speaker 2>is Jason Wright.

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<v Speaker 1>I like this guy.

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<v Speaker 2>He's an astronomer at Penn State. And he said, whoa,

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<v Speaker 2>whoa guys, And this is in a separate paper that

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<v Speaker 2>I think even predated the Silurian hypothesis paper.

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<v Speaker 1>He was sitting next to them overhearing them at the bar.

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<v Speaker 2>Right, they were like covering their work while exactly so,

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<v Speaker 2>Jason Wright says, not to them directly, but in general,

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<v Speaker 2>he's like, Okay, we don't know that you have to

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<v Speaker 2>stop at the Cambrian explosion to look for intelligent life

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<v Speaker 2>on Earth. In the past. And the reason why is

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<v Speaker 2>because we have a really like that's using a really

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<v Speaker 2>limited definition of life. That's using the kind of life

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<v Speaker 2>that has certain body plans with the cent nervous system.

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<v Speaker 2>Some have like backbones, some don't, some are jellyfish. Doesn't matter, Like,

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<v Speaker 2>what if there's other kinds of life out there? What

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<v Speaker 2>if some of those single celled organisms had gotten together

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<v Speaker 2>and formed like a hive mind colony, right that was

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<v Speaker 2>capable of intelligent industrialization. We wouldn't know that, like think

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<v Speaker 2>out of the box, guys.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, exactly, because you know, it's hard to wrap your

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<v Speaker 1>head around all we know is us and what happened

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<v Speaker 1>with the development of how we got to now. Yeah,

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<v Speaker 1>So he's like, you know, turn that off, everybody, because

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<v Speaker 1>that could have happened what Josh Clark just said. And

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<v Speaker 1>they were like, who's Josh Clark? And they said, you'll

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<v Speaker 1>find out sooner enough, he said, Or maybe there was

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<v Speaker 1>another like Cambrian like explosion that happened like way way

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<v Speaker 1>back before that, and maybe it's maybe they didn't leave

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<v Speaker 1>any fossils behind, or so few that we didn't find them,

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<v Speaker 1>or maybe you know, that was a cataclysm that destroyed everything,

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<v Speaker 1>like there was this complex life. It destroyed everything, and

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<v Speaker 1>it kind of just rebooted the system with these single

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<v Speaker 1>celled organisms, and that's what we know is the start, right, Yeah,

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<v Speaker 1>And they yeah, whoa buddy.

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<v Speaker 2>I know it's pretty cool.

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<v Speaker 1>Can I pay for this guy's drink?

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Can I buy you a beer? So Gavin Schmidt

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<v Speaker 2>and Adam Frank are like, we think we're onto something here.

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<v Speaker 2>Let's let's kind of flush this out a little more.

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<v Speaker 2>And I think it was Gavin Schmidt who suggested they

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<v Speaker 2>call it the Silurian hypothesis. And the reason we call

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<v Speaker 2>it the Silurian that's a I think a period or

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<v Speaker 2>an epoch or something in Earth's history five hundred something

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<v Speaker 2>million years ago. But they weren't naming it after that.

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<v Speaker 2>They were naming it after a race of lizard people

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<v Speaker 2>who are characters on Doctor Who.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, do you watch Do you have any doctor who experience?

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<v Speaker 2>None? I feel like it's like this whole thing out

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<v Speaker 2>there that's waiting for me to meet it, and I'm like,

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<v Speaker 2>I don't know.

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<v Speaker 1>I mean, I've never I don't know anything about it.

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<v Speaker 1>But I just caveat that because there may be emails

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<v Speaker 1>coming in that are like they're not lizard like people.

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<v Speaker 1>They are this like, I have no idea. I looked

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<v Speaker 1>at pictures of them like you did, and they look

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<v Speaker 1>like lizard reptilian type creatures.

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<v Speaker 2>They do. So that I mean for all INtime process

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<v Speaker 2>is if you're not super into Doctor Who, they're.

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<v Speaker 1>Lizard people, I really really hope.

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<v Speaker 2>So the reason that they named it after this race

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<v Speaker 2>of lizard people and Doctor Who is that on the

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<v Speaker 2>in the Doctor Who universe, they lived about three hundred

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<v Speaker 2>million years ago, which would actually make them place them

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<v Speaker 2>in the Carboniferous period, not the Silurian and apparently all

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<v Speaker 2>Doctor Who fans are aware.

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<v Speaker 1>Of that because they're all Doctor Frank's right.

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<v Speaker 2>But they supposedly survived a bunch of cataclysms here on

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<v Speaker 2>Earth by moving underground hibernating until things cooled off a

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<v Speaker 2>little bit. And now they're back in the Doctor Who universe,

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<v Speaker 2>so they would like the ancient civilization. And so there's

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<v Speaker 2>two reasons why I find the unfortunate that they named

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<v Speaker 2>it after that. One it just makes the whole thing

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<v Speaker 2>silly to a degree. Apologies to Doctor Who fans, but

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<v Speaker 2>it it like this is an actual, like academic exercise.

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<v Speaker 2>They're engaged in. It has a silly thing out of

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<v Speaker 2>the gates.

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<v Speaker 1>It's a tea. I mean again, we're not saying doctor

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<v Speaker 1>who is silly, but it'd be like us coming up

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<v Speaker 1>with like the Family Ties hypothesis or something right right,

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<v Speaker 1>Like it's named after a TV show.

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<v Speaker 2>It says like before you even read the abstract, don't

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<v Speaker 2>take this seriously. But it's meant to be taken seriously.

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<v Speaker 2>It's not tongue in cheek at all. The paper isn't

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<v Speaker 2>at least or the hypothesis. The other reason why is

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<v Speaker 2>because every single author who wrote any piece or article

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<v Speaker 2>about this hypothesis afterward uses a hypothetical lizard race to

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<v Speaker 2>discuss what we would be looking for. And it's so obnoxious, man,

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<v Speaker 2>So we're not going to do that. We're not even

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<v Speaker 2>going to try to guess what they would be like

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<v Speaker 2>or look like. They're just the hypothetical ancient industrialized civilization

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<v Speaker 2>that we're looking for. So if we're looking for something

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<v Speaker 2>like that here on earth, Chuck, what would we start

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<v Speaker 2>to look for?

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<v Speaker 1>Well? And I mean those are sort of the questions

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<v Speaker 1>these guys started. I guess they went to another bar

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<v Speaker 1>and started asking. They're pretty sloshed at this point, that's

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<v Speaker 1>gonna say, and they start asking even more questions. I

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<v Speaker 1>guess after they got over the I mean, hopefully they

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<v Speaker 1>didn't have to argue about Silurian. I'm praying they were

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<v Speaker 1>both Doctor Who fans and that doctor Frank didn't have

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<v Speaker 1>to convince Oh Gavin, you know, I think it might.

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<v Speaker 2>Have been the other way around, and based on titles,

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<v Speaker 2>I think Frank would have had to go along with it.

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<v Speaker 1>Okay, Well, either way, they started to sort of ask

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<v Speaker 1>these big questions, and what it really comes down to

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<v Speaker 1>are two main questions, what should we be looking for?

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<v Speaker 1>And in order to think about what should we be

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<v Speaker 1>looking for, a good place to start art is well,

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<v Speaker 1>what are we leaving behind that a future archaeologist or

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<v Speaker 1>geologist might look for?

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<v Speaker 2>Mm hmm.

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<v Speaker 1>And when they started poking around a little bit, they

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<v Speaker 1>found that, you know, there's some stuff here that that

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<v Speaker 1>does bear a resemblance to like possible signals that something

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<v Speaker 1>could have happened as far as an ancient industrialized civilization

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<v Speaker 1>that just went away.

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<v Speaker 2>Like you can't hear it, but my jaw just dropped.

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<v Speaker 1>All right, Josh's jaws on the floor. We're going to

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<v Speaker 1>seek some medical attention, and we'll take a little break

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<v Speaker 1>and we'll be right back.

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<v Speaker 2>Definitely, child.

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<v Speaker 1>Y s K.

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<v Speaker 2>Stucks.

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<v Speaker 1>I don't know that you know it stuck and sucks that.

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<v Speaker 2>It's a great name.

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<v Speaker 1>I could remember.

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<v Speaker 2>That's the name of it. It's a great name. All right,

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<v Speaker 2>stucks net with an X.

0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:04.360
<v Speaker 1>All Right, So we're back, and we were talking about

0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:07.080
<v Speaker 1>where you might or what you might look for if

0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.480
<v Speaker 1>you're looking for a previous advanced civilization and sort of

0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:13.160
<v Speaker 1>the obvious first place. You know, we're going to start

0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:15.840
<v Speaker 1>easy and get a little more complex here. It's just

0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:18.000
<v Speaker 1>like all the all the physical stuff, Like if you're

0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:23.439
<v Speaker 1>an industrialized, intelligent civilization, you're going to have industry and

0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:27.640
<v Speaker 1>cities and factories and things and skyscrapers and buildings, and

0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:30.199
<v Speaker 1>it's hard to wrap your head around all that stuff

0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:33.040
<v Speaker 1>being gone one day when you're living amongst it. But

0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:36.000
<v Speaker 1>like the life of a skyscraper is about fifty years

0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:39.640
<v Speaker 1>without human intervention to you know start. You know, that's

0:12:39.640 --> 0:12:41.280
<v Speaker 1>why when you go to New York, every building has

0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:44.800
<v Speaker 1>scaffolding on it practically, because you have to keep those

0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:49.079
<v Speaker 1>buildings up. They start falling apart because of corrosion and erosion.

0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:52.280
<v Speaker 1>So without that, even though it's hard to imagine, everything

0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:55.280
<v Speaker 1>will eventually be gone. And we're talking about in the

0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:58.360
<v Speaker 1>grand scheme of the big, big timeline, so like hundreds

0:12:58.360 --> 0:12:59.240
<v Speaker 1>of millions of years.

0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:02.680
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, but for a city itself, I mean, apparently

0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.360
<v Speaker 2>water intrusion is a big problem for all of those

0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:10.000
<v Speaker 2>tall buildings as well as erosion and corrosion and all that.

0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:14.000
<v Speaker 2>They're like, it's not going to take millions of years

0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:16.280
<v Speaker 2>for them to go away. We're talking thousands to tens

0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:17.240
<v Speaker 2>of thousands of years.

0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:18.400
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and our.

0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:23.080
<v Speaker 2>Cities will be just completely rubble, especially ones that are

0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:28.480
<v Speaker 2>built on like solid ground or rocky ground well above

0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:32.520
<v Speaker 2>sea level, because those are the ones that are most

0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:36.600
<v Speaker 2>like open and left vulnerable to the processes of erosion

0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:40.160
<v Speaker 2>that sweep across Earth's surface and wipe the whole thing clean.

0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:43.960
<v Speaker 2>And yeah, it wouldn't take very long. The stuff that's

0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:49.560
<v Speaker 2>underground might be a little more easily preserved, like they're

0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:52.280
<v Speaker 2>you know, any under any city, there's a huge network

0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:57.120
<v Speaker 2>of infrastructure of pipes and cables and tunnels and hard

0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:01.560
<v Speaker 2>hats and stuff like that that conceivably, even after the

0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.480
<v Speaker 2>city above is long gone, that stuff could could be

0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:06.960
<v Speaker 2>preserved to a certain degree.

0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:09.840
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, for sure. And we should shout out this guy

0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:12.080
<v Speaker 1>that did you dig him up? Or was that Livia

0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:17.439
<v Speaker 1>I think found him. Yeah. His name is it starts

0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:21.040
<v Speaker 1>with the J, but as yan Zeala Schevitz, and he's

0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:26.520
<v Speaker 1>a paleontologist at the University of Lester. Nice work, oh

0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.680
<v Speaker 1>boy in the UK. And we shout him out because he,

0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:31.560
<v Speaker 1>you know, he sort of let us down this path

0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:36.840
<v Speaker 1>of looking underground, potentially looking underwater because things would just

0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:40.160
<v Speaker 1>deteriorate a lot slower down there. But he's just a guy.

0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:43.760
<v Speaker 1>I just want to recommend if you're if you want

0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.880
<v Speaker 1>to get into some heady sort of YouTube stuff, just

0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:51.680
<v Speaker 1>google yan Zella Schevitz. It's z A l A s

0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:55.280
<v Speaker 1>I E V I c Z. Because I went down

0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:57.640
<v Speaker 1>a little because we had so much extra time, just

0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:01.520
<v Speaker 1>a little bit of a rabbit hole. This guy, he

0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:03.040
<v Speaker 1>has a bunch of YouTube where he speaking to the

0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:06.840
<v Speaker 1>university groups and classrooms and things, and he's just super

0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:08.080
<v Speaker 1>smart and interesting.

0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:11.240
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the stuff he's into is super cool too. But yeah,

0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:13.840
<v Speaker 2>he himself gets it across really well.

0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:14.720
<v Speaker 1>I like it.

0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.080
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so he points out he was the one he

0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:20.960
<v Speaker 2>I think he chose San Francisco. Like San Francisco's a goner.

0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:23.480
<v Speaker 2>It's not gonna be around very long once we're gone.

0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:25.720
<v Speaker 2>And by the way, I keep saying once we're gone.

0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.320
<v Speaker 2>Remember that amazing two thousand and seven book The World

0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:30.960
<v Speaker 2>Without Us by Alan Weisman.

0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:32.040
<v Speaker 1>Never heard of it?

0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:35.280
<v Speaker 2>Oh, yes you have. It was like all the thing

0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:37.320
<v Speaker 2>back in two thousand and seven. They made like TV

0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:39.560
<v Speaker 2>shows about it and all that. So this guy basically

0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:42.320
<v Speaker 2>went to the trouble of figuring out in five years,

0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:44.800
<v Speaker 2>ten years, fifty years, one hundred years, thousand and so on.

0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:48.600
<v Speaker 2>That sounds familiar what the planet would be like, yeaf

0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:52.040
<v Speaker 2>if humans just suddenly vanished, And like he goes into

0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:55.280
<v Speaker 2>detail of like the processes of erosion and crosion, what

0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:57.800
<v Speaker 2>effects it's going to happen. It's just so fascinating.

0:15:58.000 --> 0:15:58.720
<v Speaker 1>That's super cool.

0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:01.320
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it is super cool. Like the series, at least

0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:03.600
<v Speaker 2>one series I think on like Science Channel or something

0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:07.280
<v Speaker 2>like that was what was worth watching too. But that's

0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:08.680
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that has a lot to do with what

0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:12.600
<v Speaker 2>we're talking about. So the top side city's gone, the

0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.760
<v Speaker 2>stuff underneath might be preserved, but the cities that are

0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:18.600
<v Speaker 2>built along water and there's a lot of cities that

0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:22.560
<v Speaker 2>are built along water. Yeah, they like say New Orleans

0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:26.200
<v Speaker 2>is actually built below sea level. When people are gone

0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:29.200
<v Speaker 2>from New Orleans, New Orleans is gonna go away really quick,

0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:33.000
<v Speaker 2>but it will probably get preserved or at least covered over,

0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:35.360
<v Speaker 2>if not preserved by a lot of the muck, the

0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:39.000
<v Speaker 2>delta muck that's brought down the Mississippi River, and that

0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:42.640
<v Speaker 2>will could conceivably create the conditions to preserve the whole

0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:44.360
<v Speaker 2>city in some form of fashion.

0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:47.760
<v Speaker 1>Totally. But and you know, a lot of the thought

0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:50.560
<v Speaker 1>experiment is like introducing things and poking holes in it.

0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:54.280
<v Speaker 1>There's not a lot, like you know, if you lived

0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:58.040
<v Speaker 1>in an urban area. It's kind of hard to think

0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:01.240
<v Speaker 1>that there's not much urban area in the world, but

0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:06.080
<v Speaker 1>there really isn't. I think the liberal estimates have it

0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:08.160
<v Speaker 1>at about a little less than three percent, like two

0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:11.080
<v Speaker 1>point seven two point eight percent of the world has

0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:14.080
<v Speaker 1>been urbanized. Some people put it as low as one percent.

0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:18.639
<v Speaker 1>So there's there's a lot of just land out there still.

0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:22.720
<v Speaker 1>So you're looking if you're looking for an ancient civilization,

0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:25.760
<v Speaker 1>I mean, who's not to say that it could have

0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:28.080
<v Speaker 1>been like fifty percent of the earth, But chances are

0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:30.679
<v Speaker 1>it would be something a little more like what we're doing.

0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:33.920
<v Speaker 2>For sure, And so like you were saying, like, that's

0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:36.200
<v Speaker 2>one of the cool things about this as a thought experiment,

0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:38.560
<v Speaker 2>Like you raise this point and then you like poke

0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:41.840
<v Speaker 2>holes in it, then sometimes you can kind of support

0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:45.960
<v Speaker 2>it instead. And so, like a legitimate question would be, like,

0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:49.680
<v Speaker 2>why are we assuming that an ancient civilization from millions

0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:53.560
<v Speaker 2>of years ago in Earth's history had cities? Yea, and

0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:57.240
<v Speaker 2>point the reason why if they have any kind of intelligence. Typically,

0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:01.720
<v Speaker 2>the more of an intelligent organiz you put together, the

0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:05.400
<v Speaker 2>more advanced it becomes. Like twelve thousand years ago, there

0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:09.280
<v Speaker 2>was something like fifteen million people across all of planet

0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.199
<v Speaker 2>Earth tops. But then as we started to grow in

0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:17.399
<v Speaker 2>density thanks to agriculture and animal domestication, all of a sudden,

0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:21.800
<v Speaker 2>our technology started to develop at a really rapid pace geologically speaking,

0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:24.560
<v Speaker 2>and now here we are. So we could assume that

0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:27.239
<v Speaker 2>there'd be some form of density, because you need x

0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:32.080
<v Speaker 2>number of intelligent organisms to advance to an industrialized civilization,

0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:35.280
<v Speaker 2>one would imagine, So there's actually a legitimate reason to

0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:37.720
<v Speaker 2>think that they would have cities that we could look

0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:40.679
<v Speaker 2>for the problem is this, Chuck, and you know this

0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:45.160
<v Speaker 2>as well as I do. We'll see the Earth does

0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:50.920
<v Speaker 2>not like things like cities and ruins or fossils. Let's

0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:52.160
<v Speaker 2>talk about fossils.

0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:55.679
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean that seems to be the next best

0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:58.520
<v Speaker 1>place to start looking. If let's say the buildings are gone,

0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:02.119
<v Speaker 1>fossils are or how we know what happened in our

0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:06.280
<v Speaker 1>distant past. But fossils are tough, just because of how

0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:10.040
<v Speaker 1>rare they are and how hard it is to make one,

0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:12.920
<v Speaker 1>and how sort of lucky it is that they happen

0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:16.000
<v Speaker 1>to begin with, and that we find them. The t

0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.280
<v Speaker 1>rex is a great example, just a little like back

0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:23.520
<v Speaker 1>in the envelope math. Some estimates say that somewhere in

0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:26.679
<v Speaker 1>the neighborhood of twenty thousand t rexes at any given

0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:30.160
<v Speaker 1>time during their run, we're walking stomping around planet Earth

0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:33.600
<v Speaker 1>with their tiny little baby arms. They were around for

0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:36.400
<v Speaker 1>about two and a half million years. That comes out

0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:40.040
<v Speaker 1>to roughly one hundred and twenty seven thousand generations on

0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:44.320
<v Speaker 1>the lifespan of a t rex. So we're talking total, roughly,

0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:47.639
<v Speaker 1>of course, about two and a half billion individual t

0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:53.080
<v Speaker 1>rexes that lived and died at any point in their history,

0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:58.200
<v Speaker 1>and we only found fifty fossilized skeletons, which is about

0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:01.960
<v Speaker 1>two millions of one percent of the total population.

0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I should forewarn you that two millions of one

0:20:05.520 --> 0:20:09.040
<v Speaker 2>percent is my math personally, but I did use an

0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:12.440
<v Speaker 2>online percentage calculator like three different times to make sure

0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:13.800
<v Speaker 2>so it's it's accurate.

0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:16.600
<v Speaker 1>My friend, Oh, I know the math people are always

0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:18.840
<v Speaker 1>checking checking you. I was about say, getting your back,

0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:19.640
<v Speaker 1>but really trying to.

0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:22.760
<v Speaker 2>Prove you're getting I got a target on my back,

0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:23.880
<v Speaker 2>that's what they're trying to get.

0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:28.439
<v Speaker 1>Uh. But you know the movie Jurassic Park, as silly

0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:31.280
<v Speaker 1>as some of that stuff was with great movie, don't

0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:34.000
<v Speaker 1>get me wrong, but you know the the mosquito being

0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:37.399
<v Speaker 1>covered in amber, Like if you if you look at

0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:40.280
<v Speaker 1>that movie, like that one mosquito got trapped in amber.

0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:42.240
<v Speaker 1>And that's kind of what we're talking about here, is

0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:46.320
<v Speaker 1>just sort of the dumb luck of the fossil happening

0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:50.000
<v Speaker 1>to begin with a and then that fossil that's buried

0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:53.159
<v Speaker 1>eventually getting pushed up to the Earth's surface where we

0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:56.720
<v Speaker 1>can find it, right but within the window between it

0:20:56.880 --> 0:20:59.800
<v Speaker 1>popping up and it being findable to it eroding to

0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:03.040
<v Speaker 1>where it's not findable anymore. It's like it's it's all.

0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:05.920
<v Speaker 1>I mean, that's why we don't have, you know, billions

0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:08.160
<v Speaker 1>and billions of fossils, is because it's just really rare

0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:10.280
<v Speaker 1>to make one and find one.

0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:12.960
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, not just making one, but yes, finding one. It's

0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:15.600
<v Speaker 2>all a product of time and space and a really

0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:19.960
<v Speaker 2>complex formula. And I saw an article called how Can

0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:23.359
<v Speaker 2>I Become a Fossil? By John Pickerel from twenty eighteen

0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:25.399
<v Speaker 2>on BBC really well worth reading.

0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:27.840
<v Speaker 1>Did it start listening to the Doobie Brothers.

0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:32.040
<v Speaker 2>Nice, Oh yeah, rip Dicky Bets.

0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:36.080
<v Speaker 1>Huh well not Almond brothers, but sure, well yeah, I

0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:38.080
<v Speaker 1>know I knew that, but yeah, okay, I mean they're

0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:41.520
<v Speaker 1>both brothers. Yeah yeah, same time period, Rip Dicky Bets.

0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:42.640
<v Speaker 1>That was that was a tough one.

0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:44.399
<v Speaker 2>If you had been in my brain, it would have

0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:45.720
<v Speaker 2>been no, I got yeah, of course.

0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:47.399
<v Speaker 1>And it's also nine twenty.

0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:51.919
<v Speaker 2>So John Pickerell cited an estimate that one tenth of

0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:55.520
<v Speaker 2>one percent of all the species that have ever existed

0:21:56.000 --> 0:22:00.280
<v Speaker 2>has had one of their individuals fossilized. Oh wow, so

0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:04.120
<v Speaker 2>just really tiny, tiny percentages of fossils are ever created.

0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:07.119
<v Speaker 2>But and also I got to just say this quote too.

0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:09.600
<v Speaker 2>There's another article called the scene as a joke.

0:22:09.680 --> 0:22:10.919
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I thought you were going to skip this one.

0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:11.360
<v Speaker 1>This is great.

0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:14.000
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. A guy named Peter Brannan who's a science writer,

0:22:14.119 --> 0:22:18.200
<v Speaker 2>wrote it, and basically he's explaining like just how insignificant

0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:23.640
<v Speaker 2>humans have been on Earth, even as much as we've

0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:26.119
<v Speaker 2>affected Earth. It's just how insignificant it actually is, and

0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:30.439
<v Speaker 2>how easily Earthball shake our our stuff off. Yeah, but

0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:32.520
<v Speaker 2>he had this great quote. I think you should say it.

0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:37.480
<v Speaker 1>Oh, okay, do you know where he's from so I

0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:37.960
<v Speaker 1>can prepare.

0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:42.560
<v Speaker 2>No, let's say Austria, Cherk.

0:22:43.560 --> 0:22:45.600
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I guess that's sort of German. I'm just

0:22:45.640 --> 0:22:48.520
<v Speaker 1>going to read him as American. This is this is

0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:51.920
<v Speaker 1>a great quote. Each fossil was its own miracles, sampled

0:22:51.960 --> 0:22:55.879
<v Speaker 1>randomly from almost two hundred million years of history. A

0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:59.000
<v Speaker 1>few stray, wind blown pages of a library.

0:22:59.359 --> 0:22:59.880
<v Speaker 2>Isn't that great?

0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:01.800
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? That really drives it home.

0:23:02.000 --> 0:23:04.320
<v Speaker 2>It really does. So hats off to Peter Brandon and

0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:07.840
<v Speaker 2>John Pickerel. Definitely go read those and also go watch

0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:12.080
<v Speaker 2>youtubes of Yon Zelhevich, z Lushevich.

0:23:11.720 --> 0:23:15.080
<v Speaker 1>Right, Zela Schevitz kind of likevitz.

0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:15.520
<v Speaker 2>Right but with a Z.

0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:17.600
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:23.119
<v Speaker 2>So all of that said, though, we have discovered really

0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:27.720
<v Speaker 2>really old fossils. The oldest hominid our ancestor, the oldest

0:23:27.760 --> 0:23:34.639
<v Speaker 2>indisputable ancestor to humans, Australipithecus and amensis, was walking around

0:23:34.680 --> 0:23:36.960
<v Speaker 2>four and a half almost four and a half million

0:23:37.040 --> 0:23:40.560
<v Speaker 2>years ago, and we have a skeleton of that guy.

0:23:41.000 --> 0:23:44.560
<v Speaker 2>So as miraculous as fossilization and discovery of fossils is,

0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:45.600
<v Speaker 2>it does happen.

0:23:46.160 --> 0:23:51.200
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, absolutely, And that's hominids are our old buddy. Yan

0:23:51.320 --> 0:23:54.720
<v Speaker 1>Zelisovitch is like, you know what else could happen is

0:23:55.080 --> 0:23:59.840
<v Speaker 1>we're creating a bunch of potential techno fossils as we advance,

0:24:00.880 --> 0:24:04.080
<v Speaker 1>Like somebody could find a smartphone one day, somebody could

0:24:04.119 --> 0:24:08.680
<v Speaker 1>find a grocery bag that's been fossilized. Sure, the more

0:24:08.840 --> 0:24:11.640
<v Speaker 1>likely thing that's going to be found is not some

0:24:11.880 --> 0:24:13.920
<v Speaker 1>smartphone that you could plug in and then reboot.

0:24:15.040 --> 0:24:17.240
<v Speaker 2>Right, they'd be like, let's see what pictures this guy.

0:24:17.920 --> 0:24:20.639
<v Speaker 1>But it might be something like a brick or a

0:24:20.680 --> 0:24:24.720
<v Speaker 1>glass bottle that's you know, that clearly human made, that's

0:24:24.760 --> 0:24:28.320
<v Speaker 1>like artificial in shape, and it may be stamped with

0:24:28.359 --> 0:24:31.040
<v Speaker 1>like a company name or something like that. Like something

0:24:31.080 --> 0:24:35.960
<v Speaker 1>like that is more probable for a future anthropology archaeologist

0:24:36.480 --> 0:24:40.920
<v Speaker 1>to find as a techno fossil. Yeah, so, or plastic, right.

0:24:41.200 --> 0:24:44.400
<v Speaker 2>Plastic is another good one. We actually don't know how

0:24:44.480 --> 0:24:47.679
<v Speaker 2>long it takes plastic to break down to its constituent parts.

0:24:47.720 --> 0:24:51.240
<v Speaker 2>We know that it breaks down into really really small particles,

0:24:52.040 --> 0:24:56.400
<v Speaker 2>but there's still like microparticles of plastic. It's like intact

0:24:56.720 --> 0:25:03.320
<v Speaker 2>particles of plastic. Right, And if a future like race

0:25:03.560 --> 0:25:07.160
<v Speaker 2>discovered our plastic, they'd be like, this is really bizarre. Yeah,

0:25:07.160 --> 0:25:10.480
<v Speaker 2>because by definition, the plastic we make is artificial. There

0:25:10.480 --> 0:25:13.639
<v Speaker 2>are like polymers in nature like cellulose that are an

0:25:13.680 --> 0:25:16.120
<v Speaker 2>analog to our plastic, but all the plastic we make

0:25:16.400 --> 0:25:18.359
<v Speaker 2>is not found in nature. So if they found that,

0:25:18.400 --> 0:25:20.760
<v Speaker 2>they'd be like, this is kind of weird, what's going

0:25:20.800 --> 0:25:21.360
<v Speaker 2>on with this?

0:25:21.760 --> 0:25:22.480
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, for sure.

0:25:23.000 --> 0:25:25.359
<v Speaker 2>And then chicken bones too, chuck, hmmm.

0:25:27.000 --> 0:25:29.800
<v Speaker 1>Have you ever seen there was an Instagram account it

0:25:29.840 --> 0:25:32.800
<v Speaker 1>may have been called Atlantic Chicken Bones that we're just

0:25:32.840 --> 0:25:36.399
<v Speaker 1>these great pictures of chicken bones in parking lots and

0:25:36.440 --> 0:25:37.680
<v Speaker 1>sidewalks all over Atlanta.

0:25:37.920 --> 0:25:40.919
<v Speaker 2>Right, So that's a really great point. There's the people

0:25:40.920 --> 0:25:44.560
<v Speaker 2>who are like all bully on the anthroposceine, the idea

0:25:44.600 --> 0:25:50.120
<v Speaker 2>that the humans are creating our own geological era or epoch, say,

0:25:50.160 --> 0:25:53.240
<v Speaker 2>like chicken bones are probably a pretty good bet for

0:25:54.000 --> 0:25:58.080
<v Speaker 2>like fossilized evidence of our presence. Because we raise and

0:25:58.160 --> 0:26:01.720
<v Speaker 2>kill so many chickens at Box the Mine, their bones

0:26:01.760 --> 0:26:07.160
<v Speaker 2>get everywhere, and they are anatomically different from all other

0:26:07.240 --> 0:26:09.800
<v Speaker 2>kinds of chickens because we've bred them to be different,

0:26:09.840 --> 0:26:12.200
<v Speaker 2>like have huge breasts and not be able to walk

0:26:12.240 --> 0:26:15.920
<v Speaker 2>in all sorts of terrible stuff. So if you found

0:26:15.960 --> 0:26:18.399
<v Speaker 2>other chicken bones in the fossil record, and then you

0:26:18.440 --> 0:26:20.919
<v Speaker 2>found our broiler chicken bones, you'd be like, what is this?

0:26:21.240 --> 0:26:24.040
<v Speaker 2>And also why are they in Antarctica?

0:26:24.720 --> 0:26:28.280
<v Speaker 1>Right? I also want to point out, since I brought

0:26:28.320 --> 0:26:31.280
<v Speaker 1>up Atlanta chicken bones, I am a lover of fried chicken,

0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:33.679
<v Speaker 1>as you know. Yeah, it's probably my favorite food. And

0:26:33.720 --> 0:26:36.080
<v Speaker 1>I have been known to have car chicken.

0:26:37.720 --> 0:26:40.560
<v Speaker 2>As long as there's no shower chicken, I'm still that's

0:26:40.600 --> 0:26:42.080
<v Speaker 2>still fine on the sand that.

0:26:42.640 --> 0:26:43.959
<v Speaker 1>No, you want to keep it crispy, you don't want

0:26:43.960 --> 0:26:47.680
<v Speaker 1>any humidity in there. But I've always resisted the urge

0:26:47.720 --> 0:26:50.960
<v Speaker 1>to toss my chicken bones because I have dogs, and

0:26:51.000 --> 0:26:53.359
<v Speaker 1>I walk dogs, and if you're not paying attention, that

0:26:53.880 --> 0:26:56.000
<v Speaker 1>dog can snap up at chicken bone on the sidewalk

0:26:56.000 --> 0:26:58.800
<v Speaker 1>pretty easily. So just a psa there, try and keep

0:26:58.800 --> 0:26:59.920
<v Speaker 1>those chicken bones in the box.

0:27:00.119 --> 0:27:02.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and chicken bones can splinter so readily that it

0:27:03.240 --> 0:27:05.360
<v Speaker 2>can really hurt your dog's throat stomach. You don't want

0:27:05.359 --> 0:27:06.520
<v Speaker 2>a dog eating chicken bones.

0:27:06.560 --> 0:27:09.240
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Yeah, did I ever tell you this will be

0:27:09.320 --> 0:27:13.040
<v Speaker 1>quick about when my deceased dog Buckley ate an entire

0:27:14.080 --> 0:27:18.160
<v Speaker 1>drummet that fell off the grill. No, it popped off

0:27:18.400 --> 0:27:21.600
<v Speaker 1>many years ago Buckley left us, But I looked down.

0:27:21.680 --> 0:27:24.600
<v Speaker 1>I was like, oh, shoot, chicken bone or chicken drummet,

0:27:25.000 --> 0:27:27.680
<v Speaker 1>and it was just gone. And it was gone so fast,

0:27:27.760 --> 0:27:29.560
<v Speaker 1>and Buckley was there, but I was like, he wasn't

0:27:29.640 --> 0:27:32.280
<v Speaker 1>chewing or evening. I was like, what happened to that thing?

0:27:32.840 --> 0:27:39.760
<v Speaker 1>Ten minutes later? Oh no, he barfs up a hole.

0:27:39.800 --> 0:27:43.760
<v Speaker 1>He swallowed it whole, a whole chicken drummet that was

0:27:43.800 --> 0:27:46.440
<v Speaker 1>still steaming from the heat of the grill.

0:27:47.280 --> 0:27:47.920
<v Speaker 2>So good.

0:27:48.680 --> 0:27:50.720
<v Speaker 1>So it was like, I mean, thank god he did that,

0:27:50.760 --> 0:27:52.240
<v Speaker 1>because that would not have been good.

0:27:52.560 --> 0:27:52.639
<v Speaker 2>No.

0:27:53.200 --> 0:27:55.280
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, he swallowed that thing like a pill, and then.

0:27:55.200 --> 0:27:56.600
<v Speaker 2>When he threw up, he wiped his mouth.

0:27:56.640 --> 0:27:59.840
<v Speaker 1>He's like, totally right, yeah, I think he thought it

0:27:59.920 --> 0:28:00.439
<v Speaker 1>was worth it.

0:28:01.560 --> 0:28:05.639
<v Speaker 2>So I said something earlier, Chuck, we were talking about ruins, fossils,

0:28:05.640 --> 0:28:07.679
<v Speaker 2>all that stuff. I said that Earth doesn't really like

0:28:07.720 --> 0:28:10.480
<v Speaker 2>that kind of stuff, and I was right.

0:28:13.760 --> 0:28:14.639
<v Speaker 1>Are you setting me up?

0:28:14.800 --> 0:28:15.440
<v Speaker 2>Yeah?

0:28:15.560 --> 0:28:18.840
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Well, because here on Earth we have plate tectonics,

0:28:19.400 --> 0:28:21.800
<v Speaker 1>we have a situation where if you're talking about the

0:28:21.880 --> 0:28:26.560
<v Speaker 1>ocean crust, it subducts below the lighter continental crust and

0:28:26.560 --> 0:28:29.600
<v Speaker 1>it's going to push everything down, down, down toward the

0:28:29.640 --> 0:28:33.000
<v Speaker 1>mantle where it melts and then eventually comes back up

0:28:33.760 --> 0:28:37.480
<v Speaker 1>via like a land volcano, maybe an undersea volcano, to

0:28:37.560 --> 0:28:41.080
<v Speaker 1>form a new crust. And it's just like this this giant,

0:28:41.200 --> 0:28:44.600
<v Speaker 1>super super slow recycling conveyor belt.

0:28:45.160 --> 0:28:47.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it takes I think, on average, about two hundred

0:28:47.880 --> 0:28:50.280
<v Speaker 2>and fifty million years for new crust to go through

0:28:50.280 --> 0:28:53.240
<v Speaker 2>that whole cycle. That's just on average. It can take

0:28:53.560 --> 0:28:56.440
<v Speaker 2>hundreds of millions of years longer. Yeah, take less, but

0:28:56.840 --> 0:28:59.720
<v Speaker 2>that's just kind of generally how slow it is. The

0:29:00.040 --> 0:29:03.840
<v Speaker 2>point is is that after X number of millions of years,

0:29:04.440 --> 0:29:06.920
<v Speaker 2>that crust is what and everything attached to it is

0:29:06.960 --> 0:29:10.480
<v Speaker 2>totally gone. Once it hits that mantle, it doesn't discriminate

0:29:10.560 --> 0:29:14.720
<v Speaker 2>everything gets melted. Everything gets melted in the middle. What

0:29:14.840 --> 0:29:20.320
<v Speaker 2>about on land, Well, land is not subject to the

0:29:20.360 --> 0:29:24.200
<v Speaker 2>forces of like subduction, right, but it does have that

0:29:24.320 --> 0:29:28.400
<v Speaker 2>erosion through wind and water, and everything just kind of

0:29:28.440 --> 0:29:34.440
<v Speaker 2>gets recycled in its own way. Plus also the plates

0:29:34.440 --> 0:29:37.160
<v Speaker 2>that do collide with one another, and there's you know,

0:29:37.280 --> 0:29:42.000
<v Speaker 2>continental fault lines obviously too, that produce earthquakes when they collide.

0:29:41.720 --> 0:29:45.240
<v Speaker 2>The stuff anywhere near those edges gets all kinds of

0:29:45.280 --> 0:29:47.680
<v Speaker 2>messed up. Yeah, and that's how a lot of mountain

0:29:47.800 --> 0:29:51.560
<v Speaker 2>ranges form. And then there's the Himalayas. The thing is

0:29:51.560 --> 0:29:55.640
<v Speaker 2>is that erosion, that process of erosion that completely recycles

0:29:55.680 --> 0:29:59.520
<v Speaker 2>Earth's surface over X number of years. An eighty eight

0:29:59.560 --> 0:30:02.479
<v Speaker 2>million year, the Himalayas will be gone. It'll just be

0:30:02.520 --> 0:30:03.560
<v Speaker 2>a meadow where they's.

0:30:05.000 --> 0:30:07.280
<v Speaker 1>That's one of my favorite sort of facts of the

0:30:07.280 --> 0:30:09.960
<v Speaker 1>show right there. Yeah, it's hard to imagine this stuff,

0:30:10.000 --> 0:30:12.080
<v Speaker 1>but yeah, what is it eroding at like point one

0:30:12.160 --> 0:30:16.840
<v Speaker 1>millimeter per year? And again we're talking these we're talking

0:30:17.280 --> 0:30:19.720
<v Speaker 1>on timelines of hundreds of millions of years here, right,

0:30:20.400 --> 0:30:22.959
<v Speaker 1>So eighty eight million years, Yeah, that's it just go

0:30:23.040 --> 0:30:23.760
<v Speaker 1>romp in the meadow.

0:30:23.960 --> 0:30:25.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, because even if we're just going back to the

0:30:25.920 --> 0:30:28.080
<v Speaker 2>Cambrian explosion. And you can argue that you can go

0:30:28.160 --> 0:30:30.400
<v Speaker 2>back further like Jason Wright did. But even if you're

0:30:30.400 --> 0:30:32.840
<v Speaker 2>just going back five hundred and forty million years, that

0:30:32.960 --> 0:30:37.640
<v Speaker 2>means continental crusts have like reinvented themselves twice since then. Yeah,

0:30:37.680 --> 0:30:42.560
<v Speaker 2>the Earth's surface has been recycled countless times. Apparently the

0:30:43.320 --> 0:30:47.560
<v Speaker 2>oldest surface stretch of Earth is only is like less

0:30:47.560 --> 0:30:48.840
<v Speaker 2>than two million years old.

0:30:49.200 --> 0:30:51.400
<v Speaker 1>Oh geez, that's really young. Yeah.

0:30:51.440 --> 0:30:53.240
<v Speaker 2>And the reason all this stuff is hard to imagine,

0:30:53.240 --> 0:30:55.720
<v Speaker 2>like the Himalaya is going away, is because our sense

0:30:55.760 --> 0:30:58.400
<v Speaker 2>of time is so limited to about the span of

0:30:58.440 --> 0:31:03.240
<v Speaker 2>a lifetime, yeah, plus a couple of decades. Maybe that

0:31:03.360 --> 0:31:05.959
<v Speaker 2>when we start to think a tens and in hundreds

0:31:06.000 --> 0:31:08.160
<v Speaker 2>of millions of years into the future of the past,

0:31:08.640 --> 0:31:11.160
<v Speaker 2>we just stop. It just doesn't It doesn't really make

0:31:11.200 --> 0:31:14.480
<v Speaker 2>sense to us unless we really apply ourselves with episodes

0:31:14.560 --> 0:31:14.840
<v Speaker 2>like this.

0:31:15.360 --> 0:31:16.120
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, exactly.

0:31:16.400 --> 0:31:21.120
<v Speaker 2>So you've got plates colliding, you've got glaciers do all

0:31:21.160 --> 0:31:24.720
<v Speaker 2>sorts of They move entire regions around like bulldozers. But

0:31:24.800 --> 0:31:27.520
<v Speaker 2>even something as humble as the movement of earthworms through

0:31:27.520 --> 0:31:33.480
<v Speaker 2>the soil over enough time, that's going to erode fossils, ruins,

0:31:33.840 --> 0:31:39.200
<v Speaker 2>subterranean networks of pipes, and essentially we're back to square

0:31:39.280 --> 0:31:41.480
<v Speaker 2>one trying to figure out what to look for for

0:31:41.560 --> 0:31:42.680
<v Speaker 2>an ancient civilization.

0:31:44.520 --> 0:31:48.560
<v Speaker 1>Are we done almost? All right? Maybe we should take

0:31:48.600 --> 0:31:52.560
<v Speaker 1>a break and we'll come back and talk about why

0:31:52.600 --> 0:31:54.240
<v Speaker 1>we're striking out and where we go next.

0:31:54.640 --> 0:32:06.560
<v Speaker 2>Definitely should also stuck.

0:32:09.200 --> 0:32:11.560
<v Speaker 1>You know what, Stuck.

0:32:12.040 --> 0:32:12.760
<v Speaker 2>That's a great name.

0:32:12.840 --> 0:32:15.920
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's the name of it.

0:32:15.920 --> 0:32:18.800
<v Speaker 2>It's a great name. All right, stucks net with with

0:32:18.880 --> 0:32:21.760
<v Speaker 2>an X. Okay, chuck. So we've seen that we can

0:32:21.800 --> 0:32:26.719
<v Speaker 2>dismiss the archaeologists, Thank you everybody, and bring in the geologists.

0:32:27.160 --> 0:32:31.760
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, like, take your take your whip, take your fedora,

0:32:33.120 --> 0:32:36.360
<v Speaker 1>pack it all up, go take a break because the

0:32:36.400 --> 0:32:39.120
<v Speaker 1>geologists are on the scene. You can doctor Jones, you

0:32:39.120 --> 0:32:39.840
<v Speaker 1>can take a seat.

0:32:40.800 --> 0:32:45.600
<v Speaker 2>Right, So, I can't even like, what are the geologists like?

0:32:46.040 --> 0:32:48.440
<v Speaker 2>They just they don't have a movie franchises like the

0:32:48.560 --> 0:32:49.480
<v Speaker 2>archaeologists do.

0:32:50.760 --> 0:32:53.040
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean they're not looking for grails, they're looking

0:32:53.040 --> 0:32:55.880
<v Speaker 1>for residue. So it's not it's grabby.

0:32:56.440 --> 0:32:59.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I guess they're the thing that you most associate

0:32:59.880 --> 0:33:04.400
<v Speaker 2>with is like a slight coffin a really large, empty room.

0:33:05.080 --> 0:33:07.000
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, like there the would never be a movie called

0:33:07.080 --> 0:33:14.760
<v Speaker 1>Indiana Jones and the Ancient Tree Ring. No, you know, no, unfortunately.

0:33:14.760 --> 0:33:17.760
<v Speaker 1>But that's what we're talking about, is the fact that

0:33:18.400 --> 0:33:22.320
<v Speaker 1>if we were to have a future geologists look back,

0:33:22.800 --> 0:33:25.200
<v Speaker 1>that's what they would likely be looking for. Like, forget

0:33:25.200 --> 0:33:28.000
<v Speaker 1>the fossils, They're gonna be looking for just little bits

0:33:28.080 --> 0:33:31.920
<v Speaker 1>of residue by looking at these tiny little layers of

0:33:32.040 --> 0:33:35.880
<v Speaker 1>sediment that we deposit every day all over the place

0:33:36.360 --> 0:33:39.760
<v Speaker 1>that eventually becomes rock. And this is how we know

0:33:39.960 --> 0:33:41.720
<v Speaker 1>look back at our own past to learn things. That's

0:33:41.760 --> 0:33:46.440
<v Speaker 1>how we knew that the dinosaurs were exploded basically because

0:33:46.440 --> 0:33:51.080
<v Speaker 1>of that asteroid, and that Cambrian explosion happened because we

0:33:51.680 --> 0:33:52.960
<v Speaker 1>have studied geology.

0:33:53.560 --> 0:33:56.040
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we've learned to study those layers that get put

0:33:56.080 --> 0:33:59.479
<v Speaker 2>down and put down. And the problem is on Earth's surface,

0:33:59.520 --> 0:34:03.680
<v Speaker 2>as we've seen, there's the process of erosion, and there's

0:34:03.720 --> 0:34:06.560
<v Speaker 2>an entire layer across the whole globe. It's not just

0:34:06.600 --> 0:34:11.400
<v Speaker 2>in one spot, but there's a billion year stretch of

0:34:11.440 --> 0:34:16.560
<v Speaker 2>the geological record that's just gone. It's missing this. Yeah,

0:34:16.600 --> 0:34:21.200
<v Speaker 2>I hadn't either. It's called the Great Unconformity. And like

0:34:21.280 --> 0:34:23.719
<v Speaker 2>we'll just never know what was there, what happened during

0:34:23.719 --> 0:34:26.719
<v Speaker 2>that time, because there's no record of it. They think

0:34:26.760 --> 0:34:28.520
<v Speaker 2>that it was just a period where there wasn't a

0:34:28.560 --> 0:34:31.040
<v Speaker 2>lot of sedimentation put down, but there was a lot

0:34:31.120 --> 0:34:31.719
<v Speaker 2>of erosion.

0:34:32.000 --> 0:34:32.200
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

0:34:32.239 --> 0:34:35.640
<v Speaker 2>So some people suggest that it was during Snowball Earth

0:34:35.800 --> 0:34:38.719
<v Speaker 2>one of those periods where like ice sheets cover the

0:34:38.880 --> 0:34:43.080
<v Speaker 2>entire globe three miles thick, and that they could erode stuff,

0:34:43.320 --> 0:34:45.960
<v Speaker 2>you know, pretty cleanly across the globe. It's a pretty good,

0:34:46.239 --> 0:34:49.440
<v Speaker 2>pretty good theory. But stuff like that happens. So when

0:34:49.440 --> 0:34:53.319
<v Speaker 2>we're looking on Earth's surface, you run into problems. But

0:34:53.440 --> 0:34:56.719
<v Speaker 2>because that oceanic crust takes so much longer to recycle,

0:34:57.040 --> 0:35:00.480
<v Speaker 2>we could look there and conceivably find something hundreds of

0:35:00.480 --> 0:35:01.479
<v Speaker 2>millions of years old.

0:35:02.200 --> 0:35:04.920
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I also got to say Snowball Earth is I mean,

0:35:04.960 --> 0:35:07.520
<v Speaker 1>that's the next great Netflix show waiting to happen.

0:35:07.840 --> 0:35:10.040
<v Speaker 2>Maybe that's about an adventurous geologist.

0:35:10.600 --> 0:35:14.800
<v Speaker 1>Maybe, so I love it. So, Yeah, going back to

0:35:14.880 --> 0:35:19.000
<v Speaker 1>underwater seems to be a better bet than because of

0:35:19.000 --> 0:35:22.279
<v Speaker 1>stuff like the Great Unconformity. Going back underwater, where that

0:35:22.320 --> 0:35:25.000
<v Speaker 1>process is of wearing stuff away is much much slower,

0:35:25.520 --> 0:35:28.919
<v Speaker 1>is probably a better bet for us and a better

0:35:28.960 --> 0:35:31.800
<v Speaker 1>bet for future geologists.

0:35:32.040 --> 0:35:34.279
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, because all the stuff that enters the ocean, or

0:35:34.360 --> 0:35:36.319
<v Speaker 2>is born and lives and dies in the ocean, it

0:35:36.360 --> 0:35:41.520
<v Speaker 2>becomes detritus that eventually tumbles down to the ocean floor

0:35:42.320 --> 0:35:45.160
<v Speaker 2>and it gets locked in as sediment there, and it

0:35:45.280 --> 0:35:50.440
<v Speaker 2>happens really really slowly, Like I think zero point eight

0:35:50.520 --> 0:35:55.600
<v Speaker 2>centimeters every thousand years is about the average sedimentation. So

0:35:55.800 --> 0:35:59.839
<v Speaker 2>that means that so far we have accumulated about point

0:36:00.120 --> 0:36:04.280
<v Speaker 2>one six centimeters of ocean sediment that would bear our presence,

0:36:04.360 --> 0:36:08.839
<v Speaker 2>possibly even bear the signals that we ever lived. But

0:36:08.920 --> 0:36:11.759
<v Speaker 2>we're doing we're adding to it every day thanks to

0:36:11.880 --> 0:36:16.200
<v Speaker 2>things like nitrogen fertilizer that we overuse that enters the

0:36:17.280 --> 0:36:19.600
<v Speaker 2>water sheds and eventually goes to the ocean and then

0:36:19.640 --> 0:36:22.120
<v Speaker 2>goes and gets trapped in sediment. And so if you

0:36:22.160 --> 0:36:25.080
<v Speaker 2>were a future archaeologist or geologist and you were looking

0:36:25.120 --> 0:36:28.040
<v Speaker 2>at the layer where we existed, you'd be like, what

0:36:28.160 --> 0:36:32.240
<v Speaker 2>is all this nitrogen suddenly doing here? And then also

0:36:33.160 --> 0:36:37.640
<v Speaker 2>what are these weird polymers that used to be our plastic?

0:36:37.680 --> 0:36:39.680
<v Speaker 2>From all this stuff, all the plastic that ends up

0:36:39.719 --> 0:36:42.680
<v Speaker 2>in our oceans, those will eventually fall down to the

0:36:42.680 --> 0:36:45.160
<v Speaker 2>bottom and become trapped in the sedimentary layer. Two.

0:36:45.719 --> 0:36:50.840
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so that super soaker that your kid lost beyond

0:36:50.840 --> 0:36:52.440
<v Speaker 1>the point where the waves would bring it back in

0:36:53.520 --> 0:36:55.680
<v Speaker 1>is eventually going to end up at the or the

0:36:55.719 --> 0:36:59.320
<v Speaker 1>trash that is floating around the ocean. All that stuff

0:36:59.360 --> 0:37:02.000
<v Speaker 1>is going to go down as well. And so this

0:37:02.040 --> 0:37:04.920
<v Speaker 1>is going to lead behind like a trace, a sediment trace,

0:37:05.400 --> 0:37:09.760
<v Speaker 1>where a future geologist might say, well, hey, I see

0:37:09.840 --> 0:37:12.960
<v Speaker 1>that there was this specific time period one hundred million

0:37:13.040 --> 0:37:15.600
<v Speaker 1>years ago where there was a spike in nitrogen, or

0:37:15.640 --> 0:37:19.600
<v Speaker 1>a spike in these weird human made polymers, or maybe

0:37:19.600 --> 0:37:21.319
<v Speaker 1>they didn't know that there were humans.

0:37:20.960 --> 0:37:22.520
<v Speaker 2>But either way, like we're lizards.

0:37:22.840 --> 0:37:26.600
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, something that doesn't jibe with what we have going

0:37:26.640 --> 0:37:29.399
<v Speaker 1>on today. There are all these weird spikes, So there

0:37:29.480 --> 0:37:32.640
<v Speaker 1>was clearly something going on in this time that we

0:37:32.719 --> 0:37:34.919
<v Speaker 1>now think of as our time here on planet Earth.

0:37:35.160 --> 0:37:39.400
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, because that's how we we find mysterious signals in

0:37:39.440 --> 0:37:41.719
<v Speaker 2>the geological record. You compare it to what's above and

0:37:41.760 --> 0:37:44.600
<v Speaker 2>what's below it. And if something suddenly appears or disappears,

0:37:44.640 --> 0:37:47.760
<v Speaker 2>you know, like it's like look here, look closer here.

0:37:48.080 --> 0:37:51.320
<v Speaker 2>Now radioactivity will probably be a marker that will be

0:37:51.480 --> 0:37:56.319
<v Speaker 2>behind two from all the nuclear tests, there'll be plutonium

0:37:56.360 --> 0:37:59.640
<v Speaker 2>two forty four and iodine one nine, which have half

0:37:59.719 --> 0:38:02.920
<v Speaker 2>lives in the millions, tens of millions of years. If

0:38:02.960 --> 0:38:05.319
<v Speaker 2>we end up going out in a massive nuclear war,

0:38:05.680 --> 0:38:07.719
<v Speaker 2>you bet that will leave quite a signal in the

0:38:07.800 --> 0:38:11.040
<v Speaker 2>geological record. And one of the other things about leaving

0:38:12.200 --> 0:38:16.000
<v Speaker 2>like a record in oceanic crust is that the Earth

0:38:16.040 --> 0:38:19.400
<v Speaker 2>goes through cycles of like cooling and warming and cooling

0:38:19.400 --> 0:38:23.280
<v Speaker 2>and warming, and when it cools, the sea levels decline.

0:38:23.400 --> 0:38:26.120
<v Speaker 2>It gets sucked up into ice, and so what's under

0:38:26.160 --> 0:38:30.919
<v Speaker 2>the ocean may end up hundreds of miles inland, right

0:38:31.000 --> 0:38:35.080
<v Speaker 2>future archaeologists to find, probably more easily than they would

0:38:35.160 --> 0:38:36.799
<v Speaker 2>if it were underwater at the time.

0:38:37.280 --> 0:38:40.719
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, for sure. So you know, sort of striking out

0:38:40.760 --> 0:38:43.719
<v Speaker 1>all over the place such that our old astronomer friend

0:38:43.800 --> 0:38:46.439
<v Speaker 1>Jason Wright is like, maybe Earth is not the place

0:38:46.480 --> 0:38:48.880
<v Speaker 1>to look. Maybe you should be you know, we should

0:38:48.880 --> 0:38:50.840
<v Speaker 1>be looking on a place like Mars that doesn't have

0:38:50.880 --> 0:38:55.840
<v Speaker 1>plate tectonics and is probably a better, more hospitable place

0:38:56.400 --> 0:38:59.840
<v Speaker 1>for some ancient thing to be discovered one day.

0:39:00.080 --> 0:39:03.440
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and not necessarily a Martian civilization, but an intelligent

0:39:03.480 --> 0:39:07.120
<v Speaker 2>Earth civilization that sent probes to Mars or something like that.

0:39:08.080 --> 0:39:11.120
<v Speaker 2>The European Space Agency also points out that if anybody

0:39:11.480 --> 0:39:15.399
<v Speaker 2>had been around to send like a probe out into

0:39:15.440 --> 0:39:19.680
<v Speaker 2>geosynchronous orbit the furthest reaches of geosynchronous orbit around Earth,

0:39:20.040 --> 0:39:23.760
<v Speaker 2>it would still be there. It's orbit wouldn't have collapsed yet.

0:39:24.680 --> 0:39:28.040
<v Speaker 2>So you know, we need to look for sixty six

0:39:28.080 --> 0:39:31.120
<v Speaker 2>million year old probes spinning around Earth. That's a good

0:39:31.239 --> 0:39:32.120
<v Speaker 2>good start too.

0:39:32.880 --> 0:39:35.480
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so all of this sort of presents a paradox

0:39:35.520 --> 0:39:38.640
<v Speaker 1>it's pretty interesting, which is that if you're going to

0:39:38.680 --> 0:39:43.759
<v Speaker 1>be an industrialized civilization that lasts long enough to leave

0:39:43.840 --> 0:39:49.120
<v Speaker 1>something behind for some future geologists to find, then that

0:39:49.239 --> 0:39:52.800
<v Speaker 1>means that you found some sort of sustainable way to survive.

0:39:54.120 --> 0:39:56.480
<v Speaker 1>And if you found a sustainable way to survive, that

0:39:56.560 --> 0:39:59.880
<v Speaker 1>means you're not making as much of a findable im

0:40:00.080 --> 0:40:03.680
<v Speaker 1>packed on Earth. You're living more sustainably, and so you're

0:40:03.719 --> 0:40:06.640
<v Speaker 1>not dumping plastics into the ocean or nitrogen into the

0:40:06.640 --> 0:40:10.040
<v Speaker 1>ocean and sort of cleaning up your act and erasing

0:40:10.040 --> 0:40:13.399
<v Speaker 1>your path a little bit better. If you're not doing that,

0:40:13.920 --> 0:40:16.319
<v Speaker 1>then that means you haven't found a sustainable way to live.

0:40:16.360 --> 0:40:18.719
<v Speaker 1>So that means you're going to as society die out

0:40:18.800 --> 0:40:21.760
<v Speaker 1>much quicker, so you're going to be just a shorter blip.

0:40:22.080 --> 0:40:24.600
<v Speaker 1>So either way, it's just going to make things more difficult.

0:40:24.800 --> 0:40:27.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, whether you're long lived or short lived, the record

0:40:27.640 --> 0:40:29.319
<v Speaker 2>you leave is going to end up just being a

0:40:29.360 --> 0:40:31.319
<v Speaker 2>blip in the geological record.

0:40:31.120 --> 0:40:33.600
<v Speaker 1>Right, Yeah, again on that huge timeline.

0:40:34.160 --> 0:40:38.799
<v Speaker 2>So like, I'm sure some people are pulling their hair out.

0:40:38.840 --> 0:40:42.319
<v Speaker 2>They're like, how then, like it is even impossible to

0:40:42.400 --> 0:40:45.800
<v Speaker 2>find signals that an ancient civilization existed or what signals

0:40:45.840 --> 0:40:49.239
<v Speaker 2>will we leave too? And yes there are, And what

0:40:49.280 --> 0:40:52.279
<v Speaker 2>you want to look for is not like traces of

0:40:52.719 --> 0:40:57.800
<v Speaker 2>fossils or strange appearances of elements in the geological record

0:40:57.840 --> 0:41:00.640
<v Speaker 2>and sediments. Instead, you want to look at the impressions

0:41:00.719 --> 0:41:04.760
<v Speaker 2>that the effects of those things had on Earth, because

0:41:04.840 --> 0:41:07.719
<v Speaker 2>those get locked into geological records and they can stay

0:41:07.719 --> 0:41:11.440
<v Speaker 2>around for a very very long time, so much so

0:41:11.560 --> 0:41:15.120
<v Speaker 2>that we can look back into Earth's far, far far

0:41:15.320 --> 0:41:18.719
<v Speaker 2>distant past. Yeah, and we see signals that were like,

0:41:19.920 --> 0:41:24.120
<v Speaker 2>can't rule out that this some industrialized ancient civilization produced

0:41:24.120 --> 0:41:26.719
<v Speaker 2>these effects on Earth because we don't know what.

0:41:26.760 --> 0:41:30.120
<v Speaker 1>Happened, yeah, exactly, And what we're talking about is something

0:41:30.160 --> 0:41:33.799
<v Speaker 1>called a hyper thermal event where three things kind of

0:41:33.920 --> 0:41:39.200
<v Speaker 1>line up, which is an abrupt extinction of maybe not everything,

0:41:39.239 --> 0:41:43.400
<v Speaker 1>but many, many, many species. That's pretty obvious. That coincides

0:41:43.440 --> 0:41:46.480
<v Speaker 1>with a build up of carbon in the atmosphere and

0:41:46.640 --> 0:41:50.600
<v Speaker 1>a lot of rapid coastal erosion. All of those three

0:41:50.600 --> 0:41:53.760
<v Speaker 1>things happening at once is called a hyper thermal event,

0:41:53.840 --> 0:41:57.360
<v Speaker 1>and it's a pretty good indication that something really really

0:41:57.360 --> 0:42:00.120
<v Speaker 1>big happened to wipe out most.

0:42:00.600 --> 0:42:04.320
<v Speaker 2>Yes, and usually the hyperthermal events we found are caused

0:42:04.360 --> 0:42:08.080
<v Speaker 2>by negative carbon isotope extrusions, which is basically just a

0:42:08.080 --> 0:42:11.560
<v Speaker 2>different way of saying a ton of organic CO two

0:42:11.719 --> 0:42:14.400
<v Speaker 2>was pumped into the atmosphere and it had all of

0:42:14.400 --> 0:42:20.279
<v Speaker 2>these telltale marks, sea level rise leading to erosion, mass extinctions,

0:42:20.560 --> 0:42:23.680
<v Speaker 2>dogs and cats living together, all that stuff, right, And

0:42:23.760 --> 0:42:26.000
<v Speaker 2>so if we look in the past, there are events

0:42:26.000 --> 0:42:29.040
<v Speaker 2>that coincide with this. One of them is the Paleocene

0:42:29.120 --> 0:42:33.520
<v Speaker 2>Eocene Thermal Maximum, the PETM. It took place about fifty

0:42:33.560 --> 0:42:37.480
<v Speaker 2>six million years ago, so basically after the dinosaurs died

0:42:37.520 --> 0:42:40.480
<v Speaker 2>out and right after mammals started to take over Earth,

0:42:41.680 --> 0:42:44.600
<v Speaker 2>it got really hot. And I was trying to figure

0:42:44.600 --> 0:42:48.680
<v Speaker 2>out how hot the surface tempts and the Arctic Sea

0:42:49.600 --> 0:42:53.440
<v Speaker 2>were about seventy three degrees farrenheight twenty three degrees celsius.

0:42:53.560 --> 0:42:56.120
<v Speaker 2>That's what you find today around the Panhandle in the

0:42:56.160 --> 0:42:59.319
<v Speaker 2>Gulf of Mexico. These are the Arctic seeds today. The

0:42:59.360 --> 0:43:03.120
<v Speaker 2>global annual surface temperatures about fifty nine degrees farent height

0:43:03.200 --> 0:43:06.879
<v Speaker 2>fifteen celsius. Yeah, back then it was ninety degrees farent

0:43:06.960 --> 0:43:10.560
<v Speaker 2>hyder thirty two degrees celsius. Like, that's the global temperature,

0:43:10.600 --> 0:43:13.560
<v Speaker 2>the average across all of the globe. So it was

0:43:13.719 --> 0:43:16.920
<v Speaker 2>really really hot. And they have traced that to tons

0:43:16.920 --> 0:43:20.160
<v Speaker 2>of carbon dioxide suddenly appearing in the atmosphere causing all

0:43:20.160 --> 0:43:20.800
<v Speaker 2>these changes.

0:43:21.280 --> 0:43:23.960
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and that lasted for about one hundred thousand years.

0:43:24.680 --> 0:43:27.160
<v Speaker 1>But that's not the only one. There have been other

0:43:27.200 --> 0:43:30.920
<v Speaker 1>events similar to that in the Cretaceous period, in the

0:43:31.000 --> 0:43:36.719
<v Speaker 1>Jurassic period, in the Palaeozoic era, and then in the

0:43:36.800 --> 0:43:42.760
<v Speaker 1>six million years since the PETM the Paleocene Eocene thermal Maximum,

0:43:43.120 --> 0:43:46.239
<v Speaker 1>there were even more of those hyper thermal events. And

0:43:46.680 --> 0:43:50.840
<v Speaker 1>again they sort of all bore the same similarities, right.

0:43:51.360 --> 0:43:54.280
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, because there's only so many ways that Earth responds

0:43:54.320 --> 0:43:58.279
<v Speaker 2>to being messed with yeah, and so like all of

0:43:58.280 --> 0:44:01.960
<v Speaker 2>these things kind of do bear a strike similarity, and

0:44:02.040 --> 0:44:04.560
<v Speaker 2>there are things, there's natural things that you can point

0:44:04.600 --> 0:44:08.640
<v Speaker 2>to that could have caused them, like massive volcanic activity

0:44:08.640 --> 0:44:12.719
<v Speaker 2>across Earth, or a sudden huge depositive shale ended up

0:44:12.760 --> 0:44:15.640
<v Speaker 2>in the mantle and got recycled very quickly, and all

0:44:15.680 --> 0:44:18.560
<v Speaker 2>sorts of CO two was released in the air. Who knows.

0:44:18.960 --> 0:44:22.880
<v Speaker 2>But what Schmidt and Frank basically point too is like,

0:44:23.719 --> 0:44:27.400
<v Speaker 2>and again they don't think this is correct. They say, like,

0:44:27.480 --> 0:44:30.400
<v Speaker 2>you can't rule out, yeah, that this is a marker

0:44:30.520 --> 0:44:34.719
<v Speaker 2>of an ancient civilization creating climate change in exactly the

0:44:34.760 --> 0:44:38.319
<v Speaker 2>same way that we're creating climate change today, because we

0:44:38.400 --> 0:44:43.960
<v Speaker 2>are laying down the foundations of a geological signal that

0:44:44.000 --> 0:44:46.960
<v Speaker 2>will be detectable hundreds of millions of years in the

0:44:46.960 --> 0:44:51.520
<v Speaker 2>future as a hyper thermal exactly like the ancient hyper

0:44:51.520 --> 0:44:54.200
<v Speaker 2>thermals we've discovered in Earth's past.

0:44:54.640 --> 0:44:57.040
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, which is basically, if we do ourselves in with

0:44:57.200 --> 0:44:58.200
<v Speaker 1>climate change.

0:44:58.239 --> 0:45:00.759
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, because they're predicting if we just keep going with

0:45:00.840 --> 0:45:03.319
<v Speaker 2>fossil fuels just for the rest of the century, by

0:45:03.360 --> 0:45:06.760
<v Speaker 2>the end of the century, will have increased the global

0:45:06.760 --> 0:45:10.240
<v Speaker 2>temperature by about four point eight degrees celsius, which is huge.

0:45:10.800 --> 0:45:14.120
<v Speaker 2>Is that qualifies as a hyper thermal maximum, and that

0:45:14.160 --> 0:45:17.680
<v Speaker 2>PETM like the biggest hyper thermal maximum that ever happened

0:45:17.680 --> 0:45:19.879
<v Speaker 2>all of a sudden, that took place over like one

0:45:19.880 --> 0:45:23.320
<v Speaker 2>thousand plus years. We're doing this in a couple hundred years,

0:45:24.080 --> 0:45:27.240
<v Speaker 2>so it will really stick out in the geological record.

0:45:27.760 --> 0:45:32.440
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I think the PETM had a five to seven

0:45:33.400 --> 0:45:36.319
<v Speaker 1>celsius degree rise, and if we're looking at four point

0:45:36.360 --> 0:45:38.280
<v Speaker 1>eight in that spend of time, that's trouble.

0:45:38.440 --> 0:45:40.280
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and that's just by the end of the century.

0:45:40.280 --> 0:45:42.439
<v Speaker 2>Who knows if we just keep going. We're not quite

0:45:42.440 --> 0:45:45.160
<v Speaker 2>sure when the whole thing will study itself out and

0:45:45.200 --> 0:45:46.960
<v Speaker 2>what the peaks will be when it does, you know.

0:45:47.200 --> 0:45:47.799
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

0:45:48.200 --> 0:45:50.320
<v Speaker 2>So there's one other thing that I found really interesting

0:45:50.400 --> 0:45:55.080
<v Speaker 2>is that the fossil fuels that we're using to create

0:45:55.280 --> 0:46:00.600
<v Speaker 2>inadvertently this hyperthermal and Earth's geological record is create from

0:46:00.680 --> 0:46:05.240
<v Speaker 2>the mass extinctions from the past. Those die offs turned

0:46:05.239 --> 0:46:11.200
<v Speaker 2>into fossil fuels that we use today to essentially add

0:46:11.200 --> 0:46:13.960
<v Speaker 2>all that carbon to the atmosphere, which is creating these

0:46:14.040 --> 0:46:18.040
<v Speaker 2>warmer conditions. Yeah. And then if you take it one

0:46:18.040 --> 0:46:21.440
<v Speaker 2>step further, We're eventually going to create these mass extinctions

0:46:21.440 --> 0:46:25.680
<v Speaker 2>that will create the fossil fuels for another industrialized civilization

0:46:25.800 --> 0:46:28.280
<v Speaker 2>to come tens of millions of years in the future.

0:46:29.040 --> 0:46:33.440
<v Speaker 1>That's right. We're just insignificant, aren't we. Yeah, but also

0:46:33.960 --> 0:46:36.560
<v Speaker 1>overly significant somehow.

0:46:36.640 --> 0:46:39.359
<v Speaker 2>That's right. If you really want to get that driven home,

0:46:39.400 --> 0:46:42.759
<v Speaker 2>go read Peter Brandon's The Anthropistine as a joke. It

0:46:42.840 --> 0:46:45.200
<v Speaker 2>really it almost made me feel like fine about climate

0:46:45.280 --> 0:46:48.680
<v Speaker 2>change because it just in the grand scheme of things,

0:46:48.800 --> 0:46:50.879
<v Speaker 2>it's so insignificant. I had to be like, no, no,

0:46:50.960 --> 0:46:54.960
<v Speaker 2>it matters. It's important. Stop thinking like that. Yeah, uh

0:46:55.840 --> 0:46:57.160
<v Speaker 2>so you got anything else?

0:46:57.719 --> 0:47:00.200
<v Speaker 1>I got nothing else. This is long a way did

0:47:00.280 --> 0:47:01.439
<v Speaker 1>for us and a lot of fun.

0:47:01.560 --> 0:47:04.280
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, let's hope we remembered the press record.

0:47:04.880 --> 0:47:08.040
<v Speaker 1>Oh god, I would just retire.

0:47:09.239 --> 0:47:11.720
<v Speaker 2>Well, since Chuck said he would just retire, of course,

0:47:11.760 --> 0:47:12.880
<v Speaker 2>that means he's triggered.

0:47:12.960 --> 0:47:19.440
<v Speaker 1>Listener mail, Yes, this is a story from Dylan. This

0:47:19.520 --> 0:47:22.560
<v Speaker 1>is one that I know about or knew about, but

0:47:22.960 --> 0:47:24.320
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if we ever talked about it. But

0:47:24.360 --> 0:47:28.200
<v Speaker 1>it's a pretty interesting little thing. Okay, hey guys, I've

0:47:28.200 --> 0:47:30.319
<v Speaker 1>been listening to you for about two years. Helps cut

0:47:30.360 --> 0:47:32.160
<v Speaker 1>down on my commute and I often learn a lot

0:47:32.640 --> 0:47:35.520
<v Speaker 1>during the hitchhiking up. You were talking about the Curb

0:47:35.600 --> 0:47:39.040
<v Speaker 1>Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry David picks up a sex

0:47:39.080 --> 0:47:41.160
<v Speaker 1>worker so he can ride in the carpool lane to

0:47:41.200 --> 0:47:43.440
<v Speaker 1>a Dodgers game, and I wanted to let you know

0:47:43.480 --> 0:47:45.440
<v Speaker 1>something about that episode. Did you know this?

0:47:45.640 --> 0:47:47.000
<v Speaker 2>No? I thought this was amazing.

0:47:47.320 --> 0:47:51.120
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that episode was actually used to help secure an

0:47:51.120 --> 0:47:55.440
<v Speaker 1>alibi for a man, Juan Catalan, who is arrested for murder.

0:47:55.920 --> 0:47:58.080
<v Speaker 1>They filmed the episode during an actual Dodgers game, and

0:47:58.120 --> 0:48:00.319
<v Speaker 1>it just so happened that one and his family were

0:48:00.320 --> 0:48:03.120
<v Speaker 1>sitting in the same section as Larry David when they

0:48:03.160 --> 0:48:06.480
<v Speaker 1>were filming, and Wan's lawyer used the raw footage from

0:48:06.480 --> 0:48:09.600
<v Speaker 1>the episode to help exonerate him. So they picked up

0:48:09.600 --> 0:48:12.759
<v Speaker 1>this guy for murder. Yeah, and they proved him wrong

0:48:12.800 --> 0:48:15.080
<v Speaker 1>thanks to this Curby Your Enthusiasm footage. He was like

0:48:15.120 --> 0:48:17.160
<v Speaker 1>he was at the Dodger game. He couldn't have done it.

0:48:17.280 --> 0:48:19.280
<v Speaker 2>God did not want one in jail.

0:48:19.760 --> 0:48:23.440
<v Speaker 1>Amazing. There's a short documentary on Netflix called long Shot,

0:48:23.719 --> 0:48:25.439
<v Speaker 1>and it is truly one of the stories you can't

0:48:25.480 --> 0:48:28.640
<v Speaker 1>believe is true. Thanks for the years of entertainment. I

0:48:28.680 --> 0:48:31.560
<v Speaker 1>love sharing the knowledge with you guys, food Listener mail,

0:48:31.920 --> 0:48:34.800
<v Speaker 1>Stay positive and keep testing negative. Dylan.

0:48:35.480 --> 0:48:38.560
<v Speaker 2>Awesome, Dylan, You're a cool cat we can tell. Thanks

0:48:38.600 --> 0:48:40.880
<v Speaker 2>a lot for that great email. That was amazing and

0:48:40.920 --> 0:48:43.080
<v Speaker 2>we will definitely go watch Long Shot very soon.

0:48:43.560 --> 0:48:43.960
<v Speaker 1>Totally.

0:48:44.239 --> 0:48:45.640
<v Speaker 2>Do you want to get in touch with this like

0:48:45.719 --> 0:48:47.920
<v Speaker 2>Dylan did, You can send us an email. Send it

0:48:47.960 --> 0:48:54.319
<v Speaker 2>off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

0:48:54.480 --> 0:48:57.360
<v Speaker 1>Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

0:48:57.440 --> 0:49:01.640
<v Speaker 1>more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio up Apple Podcasts,

0:49:01.760 --> 0:49:03.560
<v Speaker 1>or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

0:49:09.760 --> 0:49:10.120
<v Speaker 2>MHM