Post Aj697OrpyfaWydNXwu by dave0@a2mi.social
(DIR) More posts by dave0@a2mi.social
(DIR) Post #Aj6866QWxAAnXcQKbA by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-06-19T21:26:13Z
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Sometimes I think about the interesting mineral formations fossils human manufactured items will become. What will happen to concrete and rebar if it isn't tuned to soil? Will landfills form deposits of their own strange oils and gasses? Will plastic fossilize into amber like formations?Even bricks could become interesting finds for the minds of the future ... if there is anyone there to admire them. What if plastic amber was a luxury jewel?
(DIR) Post #Aj697OrpyfaWydNXwu by dave0@a2mi.social
2024-06-19T21:37:37Z
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@futurebird here in Michigan it’s pretty common to see “Detroit agate” at artisan markets and craft fair jewelry booths: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordite
(DIR) Post #Aj6AE4gNWSS2M8lWFM by azonenberg@ioc.exchange
2024-06-19T21:49:58Z
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@futurebird I've often wondered if we're living through a "new Carboniferous period" because critters that can digest plastics haven't evolved yet.I expect over e6-e9 year time scales, polymers will gradually break down into shorter and shorter chains and perhaps high concentrations of them, like landfills, will become oil-field-like natural resource reservoirs for whatever species inhabits our planet at that time.But hopefully on a much shorter time scale recycling will evolve to the point that mining old landfills will become profitable, allowing us to recover some of these old resources for reuse.
(DIR) Post #Aj6AZYtCPS9q7d0Z9s by MennoWolff@ohai.social
2024-06-19T21:53:50Z
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@futurebird We were in Nicaragua, a long time ago. I think it was Granada. Outside the current town are the remains of the old town, which were considered lost for ages. Our guide told the story how the old town was rediscovered.Apparently an archaeologist saw houses built with particular old bricks and asked the locals where they got them. The answer? -Oh, just over there, by the brick mine.
(DIR) Post #Aj6ClaHvEbftqMQszI by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-06-19T22:18:32Z
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@Judeet88 @azonenberg Awww that sounds fun.
(DIR) Post #Aj6DiYcZ4mWBl6Czk8 by liferstate@mas.to
2024-06-19T22:28:06Z
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@futurebird This has already happened, in a limited way. Fordite is made of hardened layers of automotive paint that have been cut and polished. It's made into jewelry and things like that. (Though cars are now painted in a manner that doesn't generate excess paint, so all the Fordite that will ever exist has already been made.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordite
(DIR) Post #Aj6DtbK9MnnrKLrSds by aprilfollies@mastodon.online
2024-06-19T22:31:11Z
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@futurebird Seeing pictures of flooding in Miami recently has called to mind those old, drowned English towns that preserve… sort of… buildings and all under the sea. I wonder how long a skyscraper would last, compared to a stone cathedral? Now I’m wondering what becomes of a city on the longer, geologic timescale that you’re envisioning…
(DIR) Post #Aj6E93c0TVJVP9aFTk by sbourne@mastodon.social
2024-06-19T22:33:55Z
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@futurebird I read a science fiction story (novella?) years ago about people who dig around in old landfills looking for things to sell. The main character found an intact fluorescent bulb, immensely valuable, and then had to avoid being killed for it. There was a market for diapers because of the microflora/fauna they contained and labs wanted.
(DIR) Post #Aj6IWoPr1ZyR2eTxGS by apophis@brain.worm.pink
2024-06-19T22:58:23.932310Z
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@futurebird there's a passage in Man After Man, a scant 3 million years (or was it even just one?) after the extinction of H. sapiens sapiens, that describes a rock near the subject, clearly a sedimentary rock, and that there's an unusual thin line in it that's a different colour from anything elseand that all human accomplishments, our hopes, our aspirations, our empires and art, was nothing but that lineit's stuck with me all these decades but it's probably grossly unrealistic
(DIR) Post #Aj6IjEYJfwGNZsMaMC by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-06-19T23:25:21Z
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@apophis We can be proud (?) that of all living things on earth we have made the most strange materials and stuff of them all. Our treasures and possessions, our garbage and junk will leave a mark. We can forget fantasies of being so powerful that we might erase life from earth, or stop the subduction and rising of mountains. But our weird stuff is like nothing ever seen.
(DIR) Post #Aj6JZs55xCIhERnKy0 by mmby@mastodon.social
2024-06-19T23:34:51Z
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@futurebird @apophis@brain.worm.pink one wonders whether there will be a polymer fossil record or whether those microplastics will be metabolized too quickly in the endI've been watching live streams of ROV deep submergence vehicles recently and you can find plastic bags at depths of 3km+
(DIR) Post #Aj6JkoME8erOrv1ang by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-06-19T23:36:50Z
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@mmby That's so creepy to think about your bag from the groceries ... at the bottom of miles of dark water.
(DIR) Post #Aj6Jt4WBwB3JJ5cmPo by mmby@mastodon.social
2024-06-19T23:38:18Z
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@futurebird undisturbed, suddenly appearing from the dark on the mostly featureless sedimenthttps://www.geomar.de/en/news/article/plastik-in-der-tiefsee-nach-einem-vierteljahrhundert-noch-wie-neu
(DIR) Post #Aj6MQnPaFHHG0Qk5HU by sewblue@sfba.social
2024-06-20T00:05:40Z
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@azonenberg @futurebird I work in infastructure, as an engineer. The idea of plastic eating microbes frankly scares me. Great for microplastics in the environment an everything that means, but horrible for burried plastic infastructure. Almost all gas pipe, mile for mile, installed since 1970 is plastic. Buried cables, both communications and power, coated in plastic. Extensive use from an engineering perspective of how inert plastic and how it doesn't decay. Far, far superior to steel for anything buried.We are living on borrowed time once life figures out how to eat plastic. Houses will go boom from gas leaks and the internet and power will start to fall. It will be a game changer, for sure.
(DIR) Post #Aj6NRbIoqtc4h5WfMO by FeralRobots@mastodon.social
2024-06-20T00:18:04Z
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@futurebird One of the wondrous ancient substances referenced in David Macaulay's _Motel of the Mysteries_ was "Plasticus Aeternam". Our deep descendents would make ersatz approximations of it using things like animal horn or ivory.https://www.vox.com/22753080/motel-mysteries-book-david-macaulay
(DIR) Post #Aj6bFjCl2pyJ5MvKGO by nazokiyoubinbou@mastodon.social
2024-06-20T02:52:51Z
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@futurebird Not 100% on topic, but I was reminded immediately of this:
(DIR) Post #Aj6xOx2dASZLb4zQsC by StarkRG@myside-yourside.net
2024-06-20T05:21:49Z
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@sewblue @azonenberg @futurebird Microbes discovering how to eat wood changed the face of the planet, resulting in the end of the carboniferous period, when most of the coal and oil come from. I figure something similar is going to happen to our society once microbes really get a grip on plastics.
(DIR) Post #Aj7CaNjJmNxWrrrgv2 by llewelly@sauropods.win
2024-06-20T09:46:21Z
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@apophis @futurebird 1/5 an aspect of geology that took me a long time to grasp is the thickness of rock that represents a given amount of time is extremely uneven in both time and space. A flash flood can deposit tens of meters of sediment in a relatively small area, and millions of years later you have tens of meters of rock thickness just for that one flood event.
(DIR) Post #Aj7CaOwTGy4gcx1i3k by llewelly@sauropods.win
2024-06-20T09:46:37Z
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@apophis @futurebird 2/5But right outside the flood, you might have places were it took decades or centuries to accumulate a few centimeters of sediment, and other places where decades or millennia of sediment accumulation completely vanished from the record, eroded and re-deposited by the flood.
(DIR) Post #Aj7CaPp3zzk9MGZJ9U by llewelly@sauropods.win
2024-06-20T09:46:57Z
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@apophis @futurebird 3/5Yes, the history of earth is vast compared to the history of humanity, and many places the fossil record of humans would be extremely thin or even non-existent. But in other places, it would be many tens of meters or even hundreds of meters in thickness, particularly where any tailings piles from mining, or landfills, or other waste dumps were.
(DIR) Post #Aj7CaQgEoIHI1BRm2C by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-06-20T09:51:11Z
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@llewelly @apophis I think about our mines filled with crystals like great agates or geodes in some far future. "What are these tubular structures with right angles filled with gems?" The trace fossils of humans will be legendary.
(DIR) Post #Aj7CaYwU5m1jdt6rT6 by llewelly@sauropods.win
2024-06-20T09:47:14Z
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@apophis @futurebird 4/5And then there's things like roads, plastic, etc, which are so widespread that any place preservation is sufficient, they'll be there. Just as there are fossil jellyfish in Solnhofen, there will be fossils of disposable plastic balloons and gloves, as their vast numbers are sufficient to overcome their one-in-a-billion preservation odds. And I don't mean just in terms of microplastics, I mean in terms of knowing the beings who did this had five fingers.
(DIR) Post #Aj7CaflOjOJmnWybey by llewelly@sauropods.win
2024-06-20T09:47:28Z
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@apophis @futurebird 5/5And humans have greatly accelerated erosion rates across most of the world, and through mining and other activities, caused erosion in places it wouldn't otherwise occur, a massive erasure of geological and paleontological records. Alien paleontologists who missed areas of massive accumulation might still recognize some massive erasing event happened.
(DIR) Post #Aj7CvjUY44qIRT8aiO by llewelly@sauropods.win
2024-06-20T09:55:03Z
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@futurebird @apophis That's a cool insight. It did not occur to me that human mines would be filled with gem-like crystals, but yeah, I guess in some places they would be, though now I suppose calcium carbonate formations like stalagmites would be more common. I was mainly thinking about what would be gone.
(DIR) Post #Aj7DisPxfOeCJbQS5w by econads@mendeddrum.org
2024-06-20T10:03:56Z
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@futurebird paelontologists (however that's spelt) are already happy about finding a historical dump, lots of science in 1 place.I imagine landfills will be somewhat toxic to investigate, depending on the time scales, given the awful things we use day to day.
(DIR) Post #Aj7XEOiFXj1QaAivp2 by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
2024-06-20T13:42:32Z
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@futurebird @nyrath This seems like a good place to link Schmidt and Frank 2018, "The Silurian hypothesis: would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?" - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/silurian-hypothesis-would-it-be-possible-to-detect-an-industrial-civilization-in-the-geological-record/77818514AA6907750B8F4339F7C70EC6TLDR: There would be some very strange isotopic and chemical anomalies. Especially for the post-1945 layers.
(DIR) Post #Aj7lqikyrnVf6uAYU4 by cstross@wandering.shop
2024-06-20T16:24:27Z
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@futurebird I thought rebar ends up as iron oxide and cement as limestone, more or less? So, weird banded limestone pavements with iron ore inclusions? Until subduction, heat, and pressure turns it into dirty marble …