What trace would there be of modern humans......

[tic-tac_nana]

......after say 100 million years if we suddenly became extinct?

Posted this at 03:25 am after a nightmare where a virus had killed every Human on the planet.

Just a thought - time for hot chocolate & bed.

[al**bear]

Not much, even the rarest and longest surviving 'Nuclear isotopes' formed in power stations and bombs would be all but gone our junk pile in space, outside the pull of Earth ?

[Anonymous]

???

[5129frederick]

Hmmm...  Interesting hypothesis.  However one doesn't have to go back one hundred million years to attain that effect - or anywhere near it.  We are just on the very edge of technological achievements, just beginning to explore what is or isn't "possible"  I put the word possible in inverted commas because as science progresses each impossibility is scratched out with the word "proven".  We are on this earth for only a relatively short time.  When writing my late father's autobiography I mentioned the fact the his generation had seen more more changes in their lifetime than I would in mine - from Cat's Whisker's radio sets to computers, from tall ships and flying just a few feet above the ground to space exploration his lifetime, than I would  in mine.  He laughed and told me I was talking rubbish, telling me that even more advancements would be made in my lifetime, if man didn't blow himself up.

How privileged I feel to have been born in the twentieth century, to take advancements in medicine and science as if it had been there all the time:  that out of the thousands of generations who looked up at the moon  my generation would experience man landing on it, and taking it all for granted.  That never again would women - as countless as grains of sand on a beach, have to experience the pains of childbirth - the list could go on forever.

But how things could so easily go pear-shaped through man's folly.  A third World War would stop progress in it's tracks.  It wouldn't destroy mankind, but it would certainly slow him down.  With man having been knocked back into the 1700's space exploration would be handed down by word of moth.  It would take just three generations for it to be put down as rubbish - how many more before it is put down as mythology?  

Daedauus and Icarus - excuse spelling were two Greek Gods,  One of them built a pair of wings and flew too near to the sun where his wings melted and he plunged into the water and died.  Yeah, right.  Except the higher you go, the colder gets

Machines flying off to other planets - yeah, right.  Mythology and fact become intertwined which is the subject of a full length novel I am about a fifth of the way through writing.

Sorry, I didn't mean to highjack this thread.

[cee-dee]

I thought the OP was asking what physical traces would be left here after 100 million years.?

That being so, the answer would be very little. There might be some reinforced concrete kicking about but more or less everything else would have "crumbled".

[electric*mayhem*band]

---

@tic-tac_nana wrote:

Posted this at 03:25 am after a nightmare where a virus had killed every Human on the planet.

---

What trace would there be of internet life, three months after a virus had killed hundreds of accounts on ebay ?

Not a nightmare. Fact.

[5129frederick]

The truth is out there....

[5129frederick]

You're right.  Off topic - my error.

[evoman3957]

They'd probably dig up a Television and an X Box and deduce that nobody got out much !

[saasher2012]

I like the fact that someone thinks the human race will last that long, that's optimistic !.

[cee-dee]

On re-reading the OP, there's a couple of ways of interpreting it.

1/ If the human race became extinct, what trace of us would there be after 100 million years.

2/ If the human race became extinct after 100 million years, what trace of us would there be.

I read it as 1/, what about you?

[5129frederick]

We might not survive that long, but those pesky ants would - we are outnumbered by ants alone by seven MILLION to one, that's before you take into account any other of the trillions of creepy crawlies that survive on earth.  Ye Gods - makes me feel itchy all over!

[saasher2012]

I suppose it depends in what area we die, unlike the dinosaurs our bones are pretty flimsy although many have been found from long back & I'm sure many more are out there still waiting to be found, but I believe many time capsules have been left for future generations to find.

[saasher2012]

Just a small point if the human race had become extinct ,who would be looking for traces of our remains?

[cee-dee]

This chap

[saasher2012]

LOL. Silly me , never thought of that!

[tic-tac_nana]

I meant 100m yrs had elapsed after our extinction which had happened sometime during our 21st century.

Who/what would be around to care?  Well apart from a highly advance alien life form visiting Earth, some other Earth life form could have evolved to our level of intelligence & capability e.g.: marine life (especially Dolphins) or perhaps insects or Apes  (the virus mainly wiped out Humans).

Just had a thought, perhaps humans could reappear if the same chemical mix & circumstances were to repeat themselves (highly unlikely I think but never say never).

Perhaps 2 or 3 or even more surviving life forms could have evolved to our present level or beyond only to become extinct themselves.

Would the Earth be habitable after such a time frame, the Moon is gradually moving away from the Earth – is the Moon necessary for life as we know it?

Our World is approx 4.3 billion years old & estimates reckon that it has another 4.5 billion years before the Sun burns it up.

Thanks for all your interesting comments.

[al**bear]

an Idea that has been speculated about

What evidence do you think could have survived, if there had been a sentient Dinosaur, 75 million years ago. In the time right before the mass extinction,  500k years of rapid evolution in sentience is perfectly viable, just look at Us. 'Man' has been about, for about, at the Max 500k and there is very little evidence of ourr 'intelegence' even 200k years ago

So what 'evidence' could we find for say a 'Iron Age' level, Troodon (estimated to have been the most intellegent), which was surprisingly a very wide spread Dinasaur living in many different climates

[bankhaunter]

In the absence of finding any artifacts whilst we can get a good idea of how a particular dinosaur lived it's hard to determine the level of their intelligence since their behaviour cannot be observed.

Had there not been mass exinctions the possible evolving of an opposable thumb and some sort of language, things might be very different today.

[tommy.irene]

---

@cee-dee wrote:

This chap

---

Or this chap..