Stuff You Should Know✓Claim

Key Takeaways * The Silurian Hypothesis is a thought experiment and scientific inquiry proposed by Adam Frank and Gavin Schmidt, exploring the possibility of advanced civilizations existing on Earth millions of years before humans * It does not claim that such civilizations existed but rather serves as a framework for considering how we might detect signs of ancient advanced societies * About one-tenth of 1% of all the species that have ever existed have had one of their individuals fossilized * In 88 million years, the Himalayan Mountains will be gone; it will just be a meadow where they once were * Future species will likely find evidence of our nuclear tests, which include compounds such as plutonium 244 and 129 * The earth’s surface erodes at 0.1 millimeters per year * Whether a civilization is long-lived or short-lived, the record it leaves will be a blimp on the geological record, in the grand scheme of time

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The idea that we aren’t the first advanced civilization to live on Earth sounds like a fringe theory, but it raises a good question: How can we be so sure that a civilization didn’t arise and die on Earth so long ago that any trace of it has been erased?

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