Looking for an ancient cilivization?
Jyme
past, but certain aspects never gained a consensus, and the current
posters are not well represented in those threads, so I'll give it a
go . . .
An historian recently said that the troves found this year will, when
properly analyzed, effectively double our knowledge of the Bronze Age.
That demonstrates how little we know about civilization 4-5,000 years
ago.
What about a truly ancient civilization?
While there is no evidence of sapient dinosaurs, there is also nothing
to suggest the impossibility of a sapient or even sentient species
about 65Ma.
Finding proof of a civilization from that age is obviously going to be
difficult.
A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet left
few or no relics that survived millions of years?
B) What type of relics could have survived?
C) Where would be the best place to look for evidence of a Cretaceous
civilization?
D) Assuming that funding will be limited, how should the research
program be structured?
Greg Goss
>A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet left
>few or no relics that survived millions of years?
Consider how difficult it was even to recognize the crater (s?)
involved. Chicxulub is 180 Km across and Shiva is more than 400. But
they're still arguing whether Shiva is even an impact crater.
If geological structures 200 or 400 Km across are barely recognizable,
what hope does something smaller have?
>B) What type of relics could have survived?
>
>C) Where would be the best place to look for evidence of a Cretaceous
>civilization?
Earth moon trojan point or moon surface?
>D) Assuming that funding will be limited, how should the research
>program be structured?
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27
Derek Lyons
>While there is no evidence of sapient dinosaurs, there is also nothing
>to suggest the impossibility of a sapient or even sentient species
>about 65Ma.
There is also nothing to suggest the possibility.
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
DJensen
> A general form of this topic has been posted in this group in the
> past, but certain aspects never gained a consensus, and the current
> posters are not well represented in those threads, so I'll give it a
> go . . .
>
> An historian recently said that the troves found this year will, when
> properly analyzed, effectively double our knowledge of the Bronze Age.
>
> That demonstrates how little we know about civilization 4-5,000 years
> ago.
>
> What about a truly ancient civilization?
> C) Where would be the best place to look for evidence of a Cretaceous
> civilization?
The brain cavity in fossilized skulls. And that's assuming a fair bit.
--
DJensen
alie...@gmail.com
>
> A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet left
> few or no relics that survived millions of years?
Depends what kinds of relics they produced, where they left their
relics and what's happened to those locations since then.
> B) What type of relics could have survived?
The relics humans have produced most likely to last that long are
pyramids and styrofoam coffee cups. The cups are largely in landfills
though, and those will likely be buried even deeper over time.
> C) Where would be the best place to look for evidence of a Cretaceous
> civilization?
Humans strew relics thinly all over the planet; in caves,
battlefields, seabeds, and so on, but we pile up relics in cities
though we've taken up building permanent structures only over the last
few kiloyears; mostly near rivers and river mouths. Many rivers wander
a bit over shorter timescales much less over millions of years, and
coastlines advance and recede drastically not to mention whole
continents wandering about.
If say the Valley of the Kings is filled in with sand that turns
into sedimentary stone after a while, then erodes down enough to
expose the pyramids, will anyone recognize the pyramids as artifacts
60+ My from now?
Would civilized dinos also build cities, and in similar places?
Assuming they'd put cities in places humans would, have we any idea
where to look for 60+ My old remains of rivers and coastlines?
> D) Assuming that funding will be limited, how should the research
> program be structured?
First, try to figure out what you'll be looking for. Then, try to
figure out the very best place to look for it.
Then, go look!
Mark L. Fergerson
Derek Lyons
>Jyme <jym...@dialup4less.com> wrote:
>
>>A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet left
>>few or no relics that survived millions of years?
>
>Consider how difficult it was even to recognize the crater (s?)
>involved. Chicxulub is 180 Km across and Shiva is more than 400. But
>they're still arguing whether Shiva is even an impact crater.
>
>If geological structures 200 or 400 Km across are barely recognizable,
>what hope does something smaller have?
Well, we know about the dinosaurs from the large variety of items much
smaller and more delicate than impact craters that we find in such
abundance...
I.E. if bones, eggshells, and impressions of soft tissue survive as
fossils, then the artifacts of a civilization whoe members left such
traces have an equal chance of surviving. Depending on the material,
such artifacts actually have a *higher* chance of surviving - E.G.
stone tools.
Derek Lyons
> If say the Valley of the Kings is filled in with sand that turns
>into sedimentary stone after a while, then erodes down enough to
>expose the pyramids, will anyone recognize the pyramids as artifacts
>60+ My from now?
They'd have a hard time recognizing the pyramids in the Valley of the
Kings because there aren't any. OTOH, there's a much higher chance of
finding a pyramid than finding the Valley because the Valley is a
single relatively small location, while there's a couple of hundred
pyramids scattered across a wide area.
Jim Burns
> A general form of this topic has been posted
> in this group in the past, but certain aspects
> never gained a consensus, and the current posters
> are not well represented in those threads,
>
> An historian recently said that the troves found
> this year will, when properly analyzed, effectively
> double our knowledge of the Bronze Age.
>
> That demonstrates how little we know about
> civilization 4-5,000 years ago.
>
> What about a truly ancient civilization?
This is a very different question depending on whether
you are asking as a scientist or asking as a science
fiction writer.
If you are asking as a writer, you have the power to
place this ancient civilization anywhere you like,
including someplace where we could have overlooked it
before today (or before some year to be named later).
Charlie Stross did this in /The Jennifer Morgue/:
There is an /very/ ancient civilization on the ocean
floor -- /still/ on the ocean floor -- to whom
we poor humans are little more than primitives
chipping rocks. Fortunately for us, they have no
interest in conquering us, or doing anything with
us or to us, as long as we don't bother them.
If you would rather have your ancient civilization
safely dead, you might design it so that you can
creatively reinterpret well-known features of the
real world to be over-looked evidence for them.
Larry Niven did this in "The Green Marauder":
Billions of years ago, Earth had a wonderful
civilization, but they had evolved before the planet
had an oxygen atmosphere. When green plants started
pouring the poisonous oxygen into the atmosphere,
they fought back, but lost and were wiped out.
> While there is no evidence of sapient dinosaurs,
> there is also nothing to suggest the impossibility
> of a sapient or even sentient species about 65Ma.
>
> Finding proof of a civilization from that age is
> obviously going to be difficult.
I think this looks so difficult because /our/
civilization would leave few traces over that large
a time span. This is a very real problem for
a scientist. What would a such civilization really
look like? Well, our best guess is it would look like
all the other civilizations we know of (uh, this one).
You are not limited this way, if you are a writer.
> A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization
> have been and yet left few or no relics that
> survived millions of years?
The easy answer is "Given how little we know,
possibly very advanced".
But I think that question assumes too much.
Would these dino sapiens "advance" in the same
direction we have been advancing? I'm not even
sure homo sapiens would, if we could "rewind
the tape" of history to the Neolithic. And would
we even recognize artifacts of a radically
different technology as artifacts?
> B) What type of relics could have survived?
>
> C) Where would be the best place to look for
> evidence of a Cretaceous civilization?
There is an often-told story about a man who,
one night, finds a friend of his looking for his
car keys on the ground under a street lamp.
He helps him look for a while, with no success,
then he asks, "Are you sure you lost your
keys here?"
His friend answers, "Oh, no. I lost my keys
back there. But the light is better over here."
The answers to B and C basically tell us where
the street lamp shines. The kind of evidence that
we could find doesn't necessarily look anything
like whatever evidence a real ancient civilization
would leave.
I think the kind of evidence that has the best
chance of being recognized mega-years or giga-years
later would be biological. I am reminded of
the engineered species left behind by the Tnuctipun
in Larry Niven's Known Space, like the Bandersnatchi
or the stage trees.
If you want the evidence on Earth, then it has to
be reasonable that we haven't noticed it up to
now. Could a message or a copyright notice have
been encoded into our genome or the genome
of those little shrews a hundred million years
ago, and only recovered now by comparisons
across the class of mammals?
> D) Assuming that funding will be limited,
> how should the research program be structured?
I think this is a question that would only be asked
by a scientist. A writer can create an out-of-the-blue
un-looked-for connection between X and Y that
suddenly points to Z = an ancient civilization
right here on Earth. That's not a bad plot device;
the unexpected does happen. But if I were merely a
scientist (rather than a god-like writer), I would
want to make the most of my meager resources.
I would model it on the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence, SETI. An argument could be made that
it is rightly part of SETI. Either program would have
a very high pay-off in the case of success, but also
a very high chance of finding nothing much and thus
a researcher would have a very high chance of being
labeled nuts for looking.
I would not expect the search for /terrestrial/
intelligence to have a clear end point. There would
probably be a few very low budget, very speculative
projects, depending on the very few researchers willing
to risk looking like loons to their colleagues.
Jim Burns
Peter Knutsen
> Consider how difficult it was even to recognize the crater (s?)
> involved. Chicxulub is 180 Km across and Shiva is more than 400. But
> they're still arguing whether Shiva is even an impact crater.
>
> If geological structures 200 or 400 Km across are barely recognizable,
> what hope does something smaller have?
Isn't it the other way around? Difficulty recognizing those craters as
impact craters because they are so freakin' large?
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
Peter Knutsen
[...]
> While there is no evidence of sapient dinosaurs, there is also nothing
> to suggest the impossibility of a sapient or even sentient species
> about 65Ma.
How do you distinguish between "sentient" and "sapient"?
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
Peter Knutsen
[...]
> I.E. if bones, eggshells, and impressions of soft tissue survive as
> fossils, then the artifacts of a civilization whoe members left such
> traces have an equal chance of surviving. Depending on the material,
> such artifacts actually have a *higher* chance of surviving - E.G.
> stone tools.
In her "Pliocene Exiles" science fantasy series, Julian May has aliens
on Earth, in the Piocene era, using tools made of advanced ceramics. The
aliens are extremely allergic to iron and therefore shun metalworking,
which is presumably why modern era archeologists haven't found any
remains of their tools.
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
James Nicoll
Stone seems to be pretty durable.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
Jyme
<pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote:
>In her "Pliocene Exiles" science fantasy series, Julian May has aliens
>on Earth, in the Piocene era, using tools made of advanced ceramics. The
>aliens are extremely allergic to iron and therefore shun metalworking,
>which is presumably why modern era archeologists haven't found any
>remains of their tools.
It seems to me that ceramics would remain much longer than metals
which rust and are easily deformed by heat and pressure.
Jyme
<pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote:
>Jyme wrote:
>[...]
>> While there is no evidence of sapient dinosaurs, there is also nothing
>> to suggest the impossibility of a sapient or even sentient species
>> about 65Ma.
>[...]
>
>How do you distinguish between "sentient" and "sapient"?
Conceding that the line between them is blurred, I define sentience as
self-awareness and sapience as conceptualizing intangibles.
(The only example that comes to mind of the difference was told to me
by a somewhat whimsical philosophy prof -- a cat faced with a clearly
unconquerable foe in a fight over a female will go away and
masturbate. A human in the same situation learns to make jewelry.)
Jyme
wrote:
>Jyme wrote:
>>
>> What about a truly ancient civilization?
>
>This is a very different question depending on whether
>you are asking as a scientist or asking as a science
>fiction writer.
I'm a purist -- if it doesn't rely on science, then it's fantasy and
not science fiction.
>Could a message or a copyright notice have
>been encoded into our genome or the genome
>of those little shrews a hundred million years
>ago, and only recovered now by comparisons
>across the class of mammals?
So a genome project involving reconstructing DNA from a variety of
ages to see if something was added?
>I would model it on the search for extraterrestrial
>intelligence, SETI. An argument could be made that
>it is rightly part of SETI. Either program would have
>a very high pay-off in the case of success, but also
>a very high chance of finding nothing much and thus
>a researcher would have a very high chance of being
>labeled nuts for looking.
Unless they could sell it as "the techniques we develop may have
applications in other disciplines" (as in the space race creating
Teflon and Tang)?
Patok
> Peter Knutsen wrote:
>> Jyme wrote:
>> [...]
>>> While there is no evidence of sapient dinosaurs, there is also nothing
>>> to suggest the impossibility of a sapient or even sentient species
>>> about 65Ma.
>>
>
> Conceding that the line between them is blurred, I define sentience as
> self-awareness and sapience as conceptualizing intangibles.
Hmm. Using these definitions, can there be sentience without
sapience? Sapience without sentience?
> (The only example that comes to mind of the difference was told to me
> by a somewhat whimsical philosophy prof -- a cat faced with a clearly
> unconquerable foe in a fight over a female will go away and
> masturbate. A human in the same situation learns to make jewelry.)
Very weird. I'd thunk that the cat would fight to the death, and
the man masturbate, but whatever... :)
--
You'd be crazy to e-mail me with the crazy. But leave the div alone.
Damien Valentine
frequently -- I refer the querent to Weisman's "The World Without
Us". In this case, you would use the predictions he's got for human
artifiacts millions of years in the future, and read them as saurian
artifacts millions of years in the past. To sum up (in case your
library doesn't have the book): after about 6 or 7 million years,
you're left with stockpiled uranium, trace amounts of pesticides, and
bronze sculptures or tools. Everything else has rusted, eroded,
biodegraded, or what have you; even ceramics and stone objects don't
stand much of a chance. I imagine the bronze and uranium would stick
around to the 60-70 million year range; not sure about the pesticides.
Dan Goodman
> A general form of this topic has been posted in this group in the
> past, but certain aspects never gained a consensus, and the current
> posters are not well represented in those threads, so I'll give it a
> go . . .
>
> An historian recently said that the troves found this year will, when
> properly analyzed, effectively double our knowledge of the Bronze Age.
>
> That demonstrates how little we know about civilization 4-5,000 years
> ago.
>
> What about a truly ancient civilization?
>
> While there is no evidence of sapient dinosaurs, there is also nothing
> to suggest the impossibility of a sapient or even sentient species
> about 65Ma.
>
> Finding proof of a civilization from that age is obviously going to be
> difficult.
>
> A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet left
> few or no relics that survived millions of years?
>
> B) What type of relics could have survived?
Offhand, I would say the longest-surviving signs of our existence will
be what's _missing_: the fossil fuels we've used up, the metals which
exist where natural processes wouldn't have concentrated them, but
missing from where they "should" be.
--
Dan Goodman
Journal at:
dsgood.livejournal.com
dsgood.dreamwidth.org
dsgood.insanejournal.com
Dorothy J Heydt
>chance of being recognized mega-years or giga-years
>later would be biological. I am reminded of
>the engineered species left behind by the Tnuctipun
Nitpick: the engineered species were left behind by the thrintun,
or Slavers. The tnuctipun were one of the species that perished
long before the present.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
Dorothy J Heydt
Except that the advanced ceramics ought to endure at least as
well as metals: way better than ferrous metals.
Bill Snyder
Heydt) wrote:
>In article <4B0041...@osu.edu>, Jim Burns <burn...@osu.edu> wrote:
>>Jyme wrote:
>>
>>I think the kind of evidence that has the best
>>chance of being recognized mega-years or giga-years
>>later would be biological. I am reminded of
>>the engineered species left behind by the Tnuctipun
>
>Nitpick: the engineered species were left behind by the thrintun,
>or Slavers. The tnuctipun were one of the species that perished
>long before the present.
But the tnuctipun were the actual biological engineers. The
thrintun, given their Slaver power, didn't do much except give
orders.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
Bryan Derksen
I seem to recall a short story in which alien archaeologists are
studying the super-ancient remains of Earth civilization, and the most
common artifact they unearth from our cities' fossil-beds are ceramic
toilets. They develop the theory that these are altars of some sort.
Bryan Derksen
> Whenever "lost civilization" questions pop up -- which is surprisingly
> frequently -- I refer the querent to Weisman's "The World Without
> Us". In this case, you would use the predictions he's got for human
> artifiacts millions of years in the future, and read them as saurian
> artifacts millions of years in the past. To sum up (in case your
> library doesn't have the book): after about 6 or 7 million years,
> you're left with stockpiled uranium, trace amounts of pesticides, and
> bronze sculptures or tools. Everything else has rusted, eroded,
> biodegraded, or what have you; even ceramics and stone objects don't
> stand much of a chance.
Why not? Most rocks have lasted much longer than this. Fossils are
themselves "rocks" and we've got large and intricately-detailed fossils
dating back hundreds of millions of years, if not billions.
In fact, I'd bet on fossils as one of the most prominent long-term
signatures of human civilization (assuming we all magically drop dead
tomorrow and do no more than we have already done). Not fossils of us
directly, but rather fossils of all the life forms that we suddenly and
inexplicably rearranged all over the surface of the planet. The other
prominent features will I suspect be chemical; a combination of burning
all those fossil fuels and the products of our nuclear technologies will
leave an interesting mix of isotopes on our geological stratum. Actual
relics of our civilization (such as the aforementioned ceramics) should
also be findable in our stratum but that sort of thing is more hit-and-miss.
Andrew Plotkin
>
> Offhand, I would say the longest-surviving signs of our existence will
> be what's _missing_: the fossil fuels we've used up, the metals which
> exist where natural processes wouldn't have concentrated them, but
> missing from where they "should" be.
So that's what happened to the Cavorite ore beds of Gondwanaland, the
thiotimoline deposits in the Antarctic, and 99.99999% of the Moon's
vast superfluid helium-3 oceans.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Dorothy J Heydt
Yes. That's Randall Garrett's "No Connection" and, just for fun,
he sets it in Asimov's Foundation universe, during the time of
the *Second* Galactic Empire.
Dan Goodman
From the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base:
Title: No Connections
Author: Randall Garrett
Year: 1958
Variant Titles:
* . . . No Connections (1958) - Randall Garrett
Publications:
* Astounding Science Fiction, June 1958, (Jun 1958, John W.
Campbell, Jr., Street & Smith Publications, Inc., $0.35, 164pp, digest,
magazine) Cover: Emsh
* Takeoff!, (1980, Randall Garrett, Starblaze / The Donning
Company, 0-915442-84-1, $4.95, 247pp, tp, coll) Cover: Kelly Freas -
[VERIFIED]
* The Best of Randall Garrett, (Jan 1982, Randall Garrett,
Timescape / Pocket, 0-671-83574-2, $2.95, 261pp, pb, coll) Cover:
Rowena Morrill
* Takeoff!, (1986, Randall Garrett, Starblaze / The Donning
Company, 0-915442-84-1, $7.95, 247pp, pb, coll) Cover: Phil Foglio -
[VERIFIED]
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>>How do you distinguish between "sentient" and "sapient"?
>
>Conceding that the line between them is blurred, I define sentience as
>self-awareness and sapience as conceptualizing intangibles.
Lots of species are self-aware, and many conceptualize intangibles.
But philosophers have tried forever to come up with reasoning why
humans are somehow better.
--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
- James Madison
alie...@gmail.com
> "n...@bid.nes" <alien8...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > If say the Valley of the Kings is filled in with sand that turns
> >into sedimentary stone after a while, then erodes down enough to
> >expose the pyramids, will anyone recognize the pyramids as artifacts
> >60+ My from now?
>
> They'd have a hard time recognizing the pyramids in the Valley of the
> Kings because there aren't any.
Dur. That's what I get for having several things in mind while
trying to write about just one of them. Pyramids of Giza, tombs of the
Valley of the Kings, take your pick. Hell, Chichen Itza, Teotihuacan,
those things in China and the pyramidal mounds in Europe and North
America...
> OTOH, there's a much higher chance of
> finding a pyramid than finding the Valley because the Valley is a
> single relatively small location, while there's a couple of hundred
> pyramids scattered across a wide area.
My point is that such artifacts might be easily mistaken for
geological features than artifacts especially if the finders had never
conceived of such things as gimongous pyramidal stacks of stone as
worth building.
Mark L. Fergerson
Erik Max Francis
> Finding proof of a civilization from that age is obviously going to be
> difficult.
>
> A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet left
> few or no relics that survived millions of years?
>
> B) What type of relics could have survived?
>
> civilization?
>
> program be structured?
Better question is, who would fund it at all?
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM/Y!M/Skype erikmaxfrancis
There was never a good war or a bad peace.
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790
Dan Goodman
> Jyme wrote:
> > Finding proof of a civilization from that age is obviously going to
> > be difficult.
> >
> > A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet left
> > few or no relics that survived millions of years?
> >
> > B) What type of relics could have survived?
> >
> > C) Where would be the best place to look for evidence of a
> > Cretaceous civilization?
> >
> > D) Assuming that funding will be limited, how should the research
> > program be structured?
>
> Better question is, who would fund it at all?
People who think there's something to be found?
Jim Burns
> On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:01:32 -0500, Jim Burns
> <burn...@osu.edu> wrote:
>> Jyme wrote:
>>> What about a truly ancient civilization?
>> This is a very different question depending on whether
>> you are asking as a scientist or asking as a science
>> fiction writer.
>
> I'm a purist -- if it doesn't rely on science,
> then it's fantasy and not science fiction.
Well, there's no arguing taste. If that's what
you like, then, by all means, don't let me
keep you from it.
I just have to point out, though, that there are
a lot of different meanings to "science".
Sometimes it means "something so well established
we can print it in textbooks with a good chance of
not sounding like an idiot in a few years".
Sometimes it means "given all we know, this is
our best honest attempt at stating what is the case".
Sometimes it only means "given the little bit we know,
we can't rule this out."
It seems to me that it is a fact that we cannot
rule out an ancient, alien civilization living
on our ocean floor -- we just don't know enough.
I don't expect you to be impressed by that fact.
Heck, I'm not impressed by it either (unless I'm
reading Stross's book and I want to be impressed).
Nonetheless, I think it is science.
Jim Burns
Allen Thomson
What about glass bottles that sink in deep water, become covered with
sediment that later turns to rock? Will the 100-megayear-from-now
geologists find the Coke Bottle Stratum?
Dorothy J Heydt
Ooooh. Have you ever seen _Allegro Non Troppo_, an Italian
animated film in the form of a parody of _Fantasia_? One of its
movements (to the tune of Ravel's (Bolero) begins with a
spacecraft visiting a lifeless planet. One of the departing
astronauts throws out a Coke bottle, and the microorganisms in
the remaining liquid mutate into an entire biosphere.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:hr%Lm.522$cX4...@newsfe10.iad:
As, indeed, they are, for young academic cult members.
--
Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.
Dorothy J Heydt
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy <taus...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Bryan Derksen <bryan....@shaw.ca> wrote in
>news:hr%Lm.522$cX4...@newsfe10.iad:
>
Now I think on it, they weren't aliens in the usual sense: they
were humans, citizens of the Second Galactic Empire of Asimov's
Foundation series (which, as you'll recall, Asimov made [almost]
humans-only so he wouldn't trigger Campbell's human chauvinism).
>> studying the super-ancient remains of Earth civilization, and
>> the most common artifact they unearth from our cities'
>> fossil-beds are ceramic toilets. They develop the theory that
>> these are altars of some sort.
>
>As, indeed, they are, for young academic cult members.
Oh, yes. Very good.
Derek Lyons
All that tells me is that she failed to think things through, or
failed to think at all, ceramics being far more durable
archeologically speaking than metal.
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
Derek Lyons
A geometrically regular, or nearly so, construction of blockes
embedded in a solid matrix of a different stone. I have a *very* hard
time believing the finders would fail to notice the difference and
arrive quickly at the conclusion that Nature doesn't make rocks out of
rectangular solids.
Derek Lyons
>Unless they could sell it as "the techniques we develop may have
>applications in other disciplines" (as in the space race creating
>Teflon and Tang)?
Since neither was developed for the space race, I fail to see your
point.
Derek Lyons
>I just have to point out, though, that there are
>a lot of different meanings to "science".
>Sometimes it means "something so well established
>we can print it in textbooks with a good chance of
>not sounding like an idiot in a few years".
>Sometimes it means "given all we know, this is
>our best honest attempt at stating what is the case".
>Sometimes it only means "given the little bit we know,
>we can't rule this out."
The difference is only significant to handwavers, smokescreen
generators, and those otherwise seeking reasons to be dismissive of
science.
>It seems to me that it is a fact that we cannot
>rule out an ancient, alien civilization living
>on our ocean floor -- we just don't know enough.
>
>I don't expect you to be impressed by that fact.
>Heck, I'm not impressed by it either (unless I'm
>reading Stross's book and I want to be impressed).
>Nonetheless, I think it is science.
You may think wild extrapolations based on zero evidence 'just because
we don't know for certain' to be science - but that doesn't place you
in a demographic I'd be happy to be considered with.
Derek Lyons
Which entire hypothesis is trivially rendered false by a single word -
fossils. If something as soft and easily disrupted as organic
material and flesh can remain detectable, then the thought that
'everything else' is absolutely corruptable is laughable.
Steve Hix
fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:
> Peter Knutsen <pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote:
>
> >Derek Lyons wrote:
> >[...]
> >> I.E. if bones, eggshells, and impressions of soft tissue survive as
> >> fossils, then the artifacts of a civilization whoe members left such
> >> traces have an equal chance of surviving. Depending on the material,
> >> such artifacts actually have a *higher* chance of surviving - E.G.
> >> stone tools.
> >
> >In her "Pliocene Exiles" science fantasy series, Julian May has aliens
> >on Earth, in the Piocene era, using tools made of advanced ceramics. The
> >aliens are extremely allergic to iron and therefore shun metalworking,
> >which is presumably why modern era archeologists haven't found any
> >remains of their tools.
>
> All that tells me is that she failed to think things through, or
> failed to think at all, ceramics being far more durable
> archeologically speaking than metal.
She wasn't quite that oblivious, since her characters' spear points, for
example, were made of a glass, or glass-like material, that broke down
over time. Don't recall if lack of maintenance or just enough time did
it.
Damien Valentine
> Why not? Most rocks have lasted much longer than this. Fossils are
> themselves "rocks" and we've got large and intricately-detailed fossils
> dating back hundreds of millions of years, if not billions.
My apologies; if any ceramic artifacts manage to survive glaciations,
tectonic disturbances, meteor strikes, and a few thousand millenia of
ordinary weathering, they would indeed last indefinitely. Though on a
geologic time scale, even terracotta is a new thing; I'm not sure if
we've made enough ceramics, or made them for long enough, for any of
them to squeeze through the gauntlet.
Ryan McCoskrie
> A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet left
> few or no relics that survived millions of years?
One which is very good at and very keen on recycling could go completely
unnoticed IMO.
James Burns
> Jim Burns <burn...@osu.edu> wrote:
>
>>I just have to point out, though, that there are
>>a lot of different meanings to "science".
>>Sometimes it means "something so well established
>>we can print it in textbooks with a good chance of
>>not sounding like an idiot in a few years".
>>Sometimes it means "given all we know, this is
>>our best honest attempt at stating what is the case".
>>Sometimes it only means "given the little bit we know,
>>we can't rule this out."
>
> The difference is only significant to handwavers,
> smokescreen generators, and those otherwise seeking
> reasons to be dismissive of science.
You say that the difference between "something so well
established we can print it in textbooks with a good
chance of not sounding like an idiot in a few years" and
"given the little bit we know, we can't rule this out"
is insignificant?
Maybe you meant to say something else.
>>It seems to me that it is a fact that we cannot
>>rule out an ancient, alien civilization living
>>on our ocean floor -- we just don't know enough.
>>
>>I don't expect you to be impressed by that fact.
>>Heck, I'm not impressed by it either (unless I'm
>>reading Stross's book and I want to be impressed).
>>Nonetheless, I think it is science.
>
> You may think wild extrapolations based on zero
> evidence 'just because we don't know for certain'
> to be science - but that doesn't place you in a
> demographic I'd be happy to be considered with.
Apparently you are instead happy to be considered
part of the demographic that considers saying
we don't know enough to rule something out when
we don't know enough to rule something out to be
"wild extrapolations". Congratulations: you are
considered so now.
I wouldn't have thought that this needed explaining,
but not ruling something out is a very different
action from saying that thing is true, or likely, or
even worth searching for.
Jim Burns
alie...@gmail.com
> In article <4b02a444.498695...@news.supernews.com>,
Urr? Obsidian has a sell-by date?
Mark L. Fergerson
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
@osu.edu:
> Derek Lyons wrote:
>> Jim Burns <burn...@osu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>I just have to point out, though, that there are
>>>a lot of different meanings to "science".
>>>Sometimes it means "something so well established
>>>we can print it in textbooks with a good chance of
>>>not sounding like an idiot in a few years".
>>>Sometimes it means "given all we know, this is
>>>our best honest attempt at stating what is the case".
>>>Sometimes it only means "given the little bit we know,
>>>we can't rule this out."
>>
>> The difference is only significant to handwavers,
>> smokescreen generators, and those otherwise seeking
>> reasons to be dismissive of science.
>
> You say that the difference between "something so well
> established we can print it in textbooks with a good
> chance of not sounding like an idiot in a few years" and
> "given the little bit we know, we can't rule this out"
> is insignificant?
>
> Maybe you meant to say something else.
I believe he's saying that only handwavers, smokescreen generators
and those otherwise seeking reasons to be dismissive of science
would call the latter science. People with a normal intelligence
and no fraudulent intent would call that psuedoscience (or, more
properly, snake oil.)
>
>>>It seems to me that it is a fact that we cannot
>>>rule out an ancient, alien civilization living
>>>on our ocean floor -- we just don't know enough.
>>>
>>>I don't expect you to be impressed by that fact.
>>>Heck, I'm not impressed by it either (unless I'm
>>>reading Stross's book and I want to be impressed).
>>>Nonetheless, I think it is science.
>>
>> You may think wild extrapolations based on zero
>> evidence 'just because we don't know for certain'
>> to be science - but that doesn't place you in a
>> demographic I'd be happy to be considered with.
>
> Apparently you are instead happy to be considered
> part of the demographic that considers saying
> we don't know enough to rule something out when
> we don't know enough to rule something out to be
> "wild extrapolations". Congratulations: you are
> considered so now.
Apparently you are happy to be considered part of the demographic
that snake oil salesmen rely one to get rich: the gullible.
>
> I wouldn't have thought that this needed explaining,
> but not ruling something out is a very different
> action from saying that thing is true, or likely, or
> even worth searching for.
>
This does need explaining, or at least pointing out: you're an
idiot.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:f0ac6c79-d58a-4a93...@s21g2000prm.googlegroups.
com:
Who said anything about obsidian? (And it's fragile enough, very
little of it would survive without being mechanically broken apart
for millions of years.)
alie...@gmail.com
> "n...@bid.nes" <alien8...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Nov 15, 8:55 am, fairwa...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:
> >> OTOH, there's a much higher chance of
> >> finding a pyramid than finding the Valley because the Valley is a
> >> single relatively small location, while there's a couple of hundred
> >> pyramids scattered across a wide area.
>
> > My point is that such artifacts might be easily mistaken for
> >geological features than artifacts especially if the finders had never
> >conceived of such things as gimongous pyramidal stacks of stone as
> >worth building.
>
> A geometrically regular, or nearly so, construction of blockes
> embedded in a solid matrix of a different stone. I have a *very* hard
> time believing the finders would fail to notice the difference and
> arrive quickly at the conclusion that Nature doesn't make rocks out of
> rectangular solids.
Suppose they'd first found things like the Devil's Organ Pipes, or
those weird maybe-maybe not structures off Yonaguni, the Bahamas, and
Dwarka?
Hell, that's pretty much the situation we're in; we still can't
agree if the rocks near Yonaguni and the Bahamas are artifacts or
geological in origin. The pyramidal structures off Dwarka are
allegedly Indus Civilization structures, except where they're at
supposedly got flooded when the last Ice Age ended. The organ pipes,
those are natural. Almost positively certainly. ;>)
Mark L. Fergerson
James Burns
>>Apparently you are instead happy to be considered
>>part of the demographic that considers saying
>>we don't know enough to rule something out when
>>we don't know enough to rule something out to be
>>"wild extrapolations". Congratulations: you are
>>considered so now.
>
> Apparently you are happy to be considered part
> of the demographic that snake oil salesmen rely
> one to get rich: the gullible.
Then, is your position that we SHOULD say we know
enough to rule something out when we DON'T know
enough to rule it out?
>>I wouldn't have thought that this needed explaining,
>>but not ruling something out is a very different
>>action from saying that thing is true, or likely, or
>>even worth searching for.
>
> This does need explaining, or at least pointing out:
> you're an idiot.
I'll leave it to others to judge that.
It's more my concern that, if I am an idiot, I will
at least be an honest idiot.
Jim Burns
Howard Brazee
<se...@NOSPAMmac.comINVALID> wrote:
>> All that tells me is that she failed to think things through, or
>> failed to think at all, ceramics being far more durable
>> archeologically speaking than metal.
>
>She wasn't quite that oblivious, since her characters' spear points, for
>example, were made of a glass, or glass-like material, that broke down
>over time. Don't recall if lack of maintenance or just enough time did
>it.
Compared to metal? Or compared to fossils?
Howard Brazee
Find some sacred ponds where we used to sacrifice our golf balls.
Derek Lyons
On the contrary - your example shows just how oblivious she was... As
glass doesn't break down over time.
Derek Lyons
>Derek Lyons wrote:
>> Jim Burns <burn...@osu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>I just have to point out, though, that there are
>>>a lot of different meanings to "science".
>>>Sometimes it means "something so well established
>>>we can print it in textbooks with a good chance of
>>>not sounding like an idiot in a few years".
>>>Sometimes it means "given all we know, this is
>>>our best honest attempt at stating what is the case".
>>>Sometimes it only means "given the little bit we know,
>>>we can't rule this out."
>>
>> The difference is only significant to handwavers,
>> smokescreen generators, and those otherwise seeking
>> reasons to be dismissive of science.
>
>You say that the difference between "something so well
>established we can print it in textbooks with a good
>chance of not sounding like an idiot in a few years" and
>"given the little bit we know, we can't rule this out"
>is insignificant?
Yes, utterly and completely insignificant. We find out things all the
time which move areas of knowledge from the first group to the second.
>Maybe you meant to say something else.
No, I said exactly what I meant.
>>>It seems to me that it is a fact that we cannot
>>>rule out an ancient, alien civilization living
>>>on our ocean floor -- we just don't know enough.
>>>
>>>I don't expect you to be impressed by that fact.
>>>Heck, I'm not impressed by it either (unless I'm
>>>reading Stross's book and I want to be impressed).
>>>Nonetheless, I think it is science.
>>
>> You may think wild extrapolations based on zero
>> evidence 'just because we don't know for certain'
>> to be science - but that doesn't place you in a
>> demographic I'd be happy to be considered with.
>
>Apparently you are instead happy to be considered
>part of the demographic that considers saying
>we don't know enough to rule something out when
>we don't know enough to rule something out to be
>"wild extrapolations". Congratulations: you are
>considered so now.
If you have no evidence of something, then you have no evidence - and
thus any assumptions or statements based on this non existent evidence
constitute wild extrapolations.
>I wouldn't have thought that this needed explaining,
>but not ruling something out is a very different
>action from saying that thing is true, or likely, or
>even worth searching for.
There's a difference between not ruling something out because there is
insufficient evidence to choose between alternatives, and not ruling
something out because of the complete and utter lack of evidence to
support a wild extrapolation.
Derek Lyons
James Burns
> James Burns <burn...@osu.edu> wrote:
>>Derek Lyons wrote:
>>>Jim Burns <burn...@osu.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>I just have to point out, though, that there are
>>>>a lot of different meanings to "science".
>>>>Sometimes it means "something so well established
>>>>we can print it in textbooks with a good chance of
>>>>not sounding like an idiot in a few years".
>>>>Sometimes it means "given all we know, this is
>>>>our best honest attempt at stating what is the case".
>>>>Sometimes it only means "given the little bit we know,
>>>>we can't rule this out."
>>>
>>>The difference is only significant to handwavers,
>>>smokescreen generators, and those otherwise seeking
>>>reasons to be dismissive of science.
>>
>>You say that the difference between "something so well
>>established we can print it in textbooks with a good
>>chance of not sounding like an idiot in a few years" and
>>"given the little bit we know, we can't rule this out"
>>is insignificant?
>
> Yes, utterly and completely insignificant.
Then you're wrong.
> We find out things all the time which move
> areas of knowledge from the first group to the second.
And how this is relevant? Some eggs grow up to be
chickens, therefore the difference between eggs and
chickens is insignificant? All the work that is done
to move areas of knowledge /has to be/ insignificant,
then, as well. You are being anti-science. Ironic,
given your rant about me.
Students who grow up to be scientists learn early on
to be honest about their work, including the deficiencies:
marginal data, problems with the apparatus, pre-emption
by other research groups. You can get away with some
embarrassing results, especially if you follow with great
results, but if you lie, your name is mud.
Being honest about what we do NOT know is as much
a part of science as theorize/experiment/theorize.
And being honest about what we do not know is ALL
that I was talking about.
Sure, there are "handwavers, smokescreen generators,
and those otherwise seeking reasons to be dismissive
of science". But spreading bullshit is not the way
to answer their bullshit. First, it wouldn't work
very well and, second, it isn't science.
One way to answer, which I tried somewhere back
upthread, is to point out how utterly uninteresting
it is to be something that has not been ruled out.
But, even if I didn't have a ready answer, I would
still tell the plain truth about what we know and
what we do not know.
>>Maybe you meant to say something else.
>
> No, I said exactly what I meant.
Then maybe you should have meant something else.
>>>>It seems to me that it is a fact that we cannot
>>>>rule out an ancient, alien civilization living
>>>>on our ocean floor -- we just don't know enough.
>>>>
>>>>I don't expect you to be impressed by that fact.
>>>>Heck, I'm not impressed by it either (unless I'm
>>>>reading Stross's book and I want to be impressed).
>>>>Nonetheless, I think it is science.
>>>
>>>You may think wild extrapolations based on zero
>>>evidence 'just because we don't know for certain'
>>>to be science - but that doesn't place you in a
>>>demographic I'd be happy to be considered with.
I should have mentioned this earlier, but, anyway,
you are lying here.
Who are you quoting with this 'just because we don't
know for certain' just above? They certainly aren't
my words. Your "[not] for certain" implies considerable
knowledge, just not absolute knowledge. This isn't
at all what I said, as anyone looking upthread can see.
If, hypothetically, we weren't absolutely certain
that there are no alien civilizations on the floor
of our oceans, but we had some level of certainty
below that, then /honesty/ prescribes that we say
we are pretty sure they're not there, but we don't
know for certain.
It may be that you think we're all but certain
-- scientifically certain, not merely strong
opinions -- that there are no alien civilizations
down there. Fine. That is a question about the
facts of the matter and, if it turns out that
I am mistaken about what we know, then I will
be glad to admit it. But you don't seem to be ranting
about facts. From the level of emotion, I gather
this is more like Giving Aid and Comfort to
the Enemy, for you.
If it makes you feel any better, I think your
spreading bullshit to counter bullshit is Giving Aid
and Comfort to the Enemy, too.
[...]
> There's a difference between not ruling something out
> because there is insufficient evidence to choose
> between alternatives, and not ruling something out
> because of the complete and utter lack of evidence
> to support a wild extrapolation.
Yes, the difference is that you labeled one
"an alternative" and you labeled the other
"a wild extrapolation."
To borrow from you: "Insignificant."
Jim Burns
Dr J R Stockton
Nov 2009 10:37:42, Ryan McCoskrie <ryan.mc...@invalid.invalid>
posted:
Keen enough to clear up Pompeii?
Regular trade over deep seas must have been established by about BC
1000. A consequence is frequent sinking of artefacts. We have only
within the last century and a half had any significant capability of
tidying up the ocean beds below about 30 metres - and on the whole we
have not used that capability for tidying, only for recovery of
valuables.
The civilisation would have had to be remarkably keen on and good at
recycling, or to have used only a very restricted range of artefacts.
--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links;
Astro stuff via astron-1.htm, gravity0.htm ; quotings.htm, pascal.htm, etc.
No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
@osu.edu:
> Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy wrote:
>> James Burns <burn...@osu.edu> wrote in
>> news:4B01DCE2...@osu.edu:
>
>>>Apparently you are instead happy to be considered
>>>part of the demographic that considers saying
>>>we don't know enough to rule something out when
>>>we don't know enough to rule something out to be
>>>"wild extrapolations". Congratulations: you are
>>>considered so now.
>>
>> Apparently you are happy to be considered part
>> of the demographic that snake oil salesmen rely
>> one to get rich: the gullible.
>
> Then, is your position that we SHOULD say we know
> enough to rule something out when we DON'T know
> enough to rule it out?
I'm saying you're stupid and gullible. Which word don't you
understand? (I hope it's not "gullible," cuz that one's not in the
dictionary.)
>
>>>I wouldn't have thought that this needed explaining,
>>>but not ruling something out is a very different
>>>action from saying that thing is true, or likely, or
>>>even worth searching for.
>>
>> This does need explaining, or at least pointing out:
>> you're an idiot.
>
> I'll leave it to others to judge that.
I *am* someone "other" than you.
>
> It's more my concern that, if I am an idiot, I will
> at least be an honest idiot.
>
I'd much rather be a smart asshole.
Damien Valentine
> >She wasn't quite that oblivious, since her characters' spear points, for
> >example, were made of a glass, or glass-like material, that broke down
> >over time. Don't recall if lack of maintenance or just enough time did
> >it.
>
> On the contrary - your example shows just how oblivious she was... As
> glass doesn't break down over time.
Not chemically, no. Maybe the original reference was to glass/ceramic
tools being worn out with use, rather than decaying. Has anyone else
read this book?
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:4b0844df....@news.supernews.com:
It does tend to just *break*, though.
Luke Campbell
> A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet left
> few or no relics that survived millions of years?
Essentially, they would have been limited to stick-and-hide
technology. Stone is durable and worked stone tools would be
distinctive (scrapers, axe-heads, spear tips, hammers, mortars and
pestles, and the like are all early uses humans had for stone; all
leave long lived relics). Worked bone could fossilize if left in a
depositional environment.
If the dinos were highly localized, they might have been a bit more
advanced - in this case the evidence of their durable goods would have
been buried in inaccessible strata.
Note that the technology described is not usually suitable for
civilization (cities, monumental architecture, stratified social
hierarchies with specialization).
> B) What type of relics could have survived?
Any widespread civilization would leave signatures of their existence
in the trace elements (and/or isotope ratios) found in contemporary
strata.
In addition to the aforementioned rock and bone tools, you could find
burial sites (assuming they had burial customs and did not just, for
example, eat their dead), fossilized garbage middens, fossilized bones
from prey animals that had been scraped by artificial tools and/or
cooked (both methods leave distinctive signs), cooked and externally
processed plant food (such as nuts smashed by rock hammers), excavated
post-holes for wooden construction, excavated basements for food
storage, brick or stone construction, and roads (particularly improved
roads or wheel-ruts). True civilization would tend to have extensive
durable large-scale works such as defensive walls, roads, granaries
(or other food storage sites, if they did not eat grain), temples (if
religious), and housing for the elite.
As the level of technology increases, the isotopic and elemental
signatures become more distinctive. In addition, you will find
fossilized metal objects (metal is much more durable than bone, and
not degraded by bacteria, so any metal artifacts would tend to get
buried and preserved). The metal may be highly oxidized by the time
we find it, but a wrench, for example, covered by silt, would still
fossilize as a wrench-shaped piece of rust between shale layers.
Glass and ceramic artifacts would also fossilize readily - just look
at how easily shells produced by fossilized organisms fossilize. You
could find cement, concrete, asphalt, or whatever durable building
material they used. Road cuts, quarries, and foundations would leave
long lasting geological imprints.
> C) Where would be the best place to look for evidence of a Cretaceous
> civilization?
In Cretaceous sedimentary strata.
> D) Assuming that funding will be limited, how should the research
> program be structured?
Like any other research program. A principle investigator begs for
money, and manages a small group of students, junior researchers, and
maybe a senior collaborator or two. For actual digs, they may recruit
volunteers. Expect maybe a month or two of field work, and several
years spent analyzing the evidence.
Luke
Wayne Throop
A better response: "It does tend to break up, though."
I'm just sayin'.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:9ab2b155-5164-4882...@x6g2000prc.googlegroups.c
om:
> On Nov 14, 6:02�pm, Jyme <jym...@dialup4less.com> wrote:
>
>> A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet
>> left few or no relics that survived millions of years?
>
> Essentially, they would have been limited to stick-and-hide
> technology. Stone is durable and worked stone tools would be
> distinctive (scrapers, axe-heads, spear tips, hammers, mortars
> and pestles, and the like are all early uses humans had for
> stone; all leave long lived relics).
None even approach 65 million years, though. In fact, none are
within an order of magnitude.
> Worked bone could
> fossilize if left in a depositional environment.
A much better point. Anybody (who knows what they're talking about)
ever speculate about how much early human debris was disposed of in
places that would be likely to produce fossils in millions of
years?
>
> If the dinos were highly localized, they might have been a bit
> more advanced - in this case the evidence of their durable goods
> would have been buried in inaccessible strata.
>
> Note that the technology described is not usually suitable for
> civilization (cities, monumental architecture, stratified social
> hierarchies with specialization).
>
>> B) What type of relics could have survived?
>
> Any widespread civilization would leave signatures of their
> existence in the trace elements (and/or isotope ratios) found in
> contemporary strata.
Perhaps they used irridium as a major component in their
electronics.
>
> In addition to the aforementioned rock and bone tools, you could
> find burial sites (assuming they had burial customs and did not
> just, for example, eat their dead), fossilized garbage middens,
> fossilized bones from prey animals that had been scraped by
> artificial tools and/or cooked (both methods leave distinctive
> signs), cooked and externally processed plant food (such as nuts
> smashed by rock hammers), excavated post-holes for wooden
> construction, excavated basements for food storage, brick or
> stone construction, and roads (particularly improved roads or
> wheel-ruts). True civilization would tend to have extensive
> durable large-scale works such as defensive walls, roads,
> granaries (or other food storage sites, if they did not eat
> grain), temples (if religious), and housing for the elite.
I really have doubts about a lot of that after 65 million years.
Especially stuff like excavations, when the time frame is long
enough for continents to move.
>
> As the level of technology increases, the isotopic and elemental
> signatures become more distinctive. In addition, you will find
> fossilized metal objects (metal is much more durable than bone,
> and not degraded by bacteria, so any metal artifacts would tend
> to get buried and preserved). The metal may be highly oxidized
> by the time we find it, but a wrench, for example, covered by
> silt, would still fossilize as a wrench-shaped piece of rust
> between shale layers.
After 65 million years of geologic activity?
> Glass and ceramic artifacts would also
> fossilize readily - just look at how easily shells produced by
> fossilized organisms fossilize. You could find cement,
> concrete, asphalt, or whatever durable building material they
> used. Road cuts, quarries, and foundations would leave long
> lasting geological imprints.
How common is it with today's techniques, to find fossilized
imprints of skin and feathers, now that we know such things happen?
Wouldn't it be interesting to find a fossil with an imprint of,
say, a business suit? Or, better yet, a cowboy hat?
Jyme
wrote:
>On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:40:08 -0800 (PST), Allen Thomson
><thom...@flash.net> wrote:
>
>>What about glass bottles that sink in deep water, become covered with
>>sediment that later turns to rock? Will the 100-megayear-from-now
>>geologists find the Coke Bottle Stratum?
>
>Find some sacred ponds where we used to sacrifice our golf balls.
Like Loch Ness?
<http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/11/loch-ness-golf-balls>
Since the zinc from the decomposing golf balls will not spread widely,
could we look at high concentrations of metals in very localized
regions of sedimentary rock as evidence of dinosaurs manipulating
their environment?
Of course not, but I have to admit that the writerly side of me finds
the idea intriguing. :)
Jyme
wrote:
>Jyme wrote:
>> Finding proof of a civilization from that age is obviously going to be
>> difficult.
>>
>> D) Assuming that funding will be limited, how should the research
>> program be structured?
>
>Better question is, who would fund it at all?
The same people who funded research into why people in bars engage in
irresponsible behaviour?
Or those who backed some of these projects:
<http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N44/ignobel.html>
As long as you can write it up nice, there's a grant waiting
somewhere. :)
Jyme
wrote:
>I just have to point out, though, that there are
>a lot of different meanings to "science".
>Sometimes it means "something so well established
>we can print it in textbooks with a good chance of
>not sounding like an idiot in a few years".
That's when you take off your scientist's hat and become an
academician.
>Sometimes it means "given all we know, this is
>our best honest attempt at stating what is the case".
If all they ever do is try to figure out the last decimal place or
make sure all the lists are alphabetized, they're not scientists --
they are, at best, technicians, scholars, or interpreters.
>Sometimes it only means "given the little bit we know,
>we can't rule this out."
That is the real scientist, the "anything is possible unless science
proves otherwise" people. Everything from DNA being a helix to the
concept of a chain reaction was a "we've never seen anything like this
and there's no reason to believe it's true, but we can't rule it out"
situation.
In order to keep the 'science' in 'science fiction,' a writer should,
imo, keep the same attitude.
Jyme
<repl...@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In rec.arts.sf.science message <hdsgjr$2lb$1...@news.albasani.net>, Tue, 17
>Nov 2009 10:37:42, Ryan McCoskrie <ryan.mc...@invalid.invalid>
>posted:
>>Jyme wrote:
>>
>>> A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet left
>>> few or no relics that survived millions of years?
>>
>>One which is very good at and very keen on recycling could go completely
>>unnoticed IMO.
>
>Regular trade over deep seas must have been established by about BC
>1000. A consequence is frequent sinking of artefacts. We have only
>within the last century and a half had any significant capability of
>tidying up the ocean beds below about 30 metres - and on the whole we
>have not used that capability for tidying, only for recovery of
>valuables.
Recycling what they could easily reach, and we still can't get to what
they couldn't?
Brian Davis
> That is the real scientist, the "anything is possible unless science
> proves otherwise" people. Everything from DNA being a helix to the
> concept of a chain reaction was a "we've never seen anything like this
> and there's no reason to believe it's true, but we can't rule it out"
> situation.
Hmm. No, science usually takes a hypothesis, makes a prediction, then
tests that... and then revises the hypothesis. Again & again & again.
I can't rule out that there might not be a dragon that eats the Sun
every 6 billion years... but that hardly makes hypothesizing about it
science. It makes it speculative fantasy at best.
--
Brian Davis
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:sn56g5h8bs3lk3l3t...@4ax.com:
Perhaps that's where zinc mines from from.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:qe76g5djb2cp1od38...@4ax.com:
> That is the real scientist, the "anything is possible unless
> science proves otherwise" people.
Real scientists would disagree with you. Real science is looking at
the data available - if there's "no evidence," then, by definition,
there's no data to look at - and formulating an hypothesis,
performing experiments to test it, and revising the hypothesis.
Repeat as often as funding allows.
If there's no evidence, a falsifiable hypothesis is impossible, and
it is therefore, by definition, not science.
Everything from DNA being a
> helix to the concept of a chain reaction was a "we've never seen
> anything like this and there's no reason to believe it's true,
> but we can't rule it out" situation.
>
> In order to keep the 'science' in 'science fiction,' a writer
> should, imo, keep the same attitude.
>
You do know what "fiction" means, don't you? Or do you?
Luke Campbell
<tausti...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Luke Campbell <lwc...@gmail.com> wrote innews:9ab2b155-5164-4882...@x6g2000prc.googlegroups.c
> om:
>
> > Essentially, they would have been limited to stick-and-hide
> > technology. Stone is durable and worked stone tools would be
> > distinctive (scrapers, axe-heads, spear tips, hammers, mortars
> > and pestles, and the like are all early uses humans had for
> > stone; all leave long lived relics).
>
> None even approach 65 million years, though. In fact, none are
> within an order of magnitude.
However, Cretaceous rocks are with us in large quantities, and the
processes that shaped them are evident to a trained eye. For example,
the cracks and chips of breccia are clear even after tens (or
hundreds, or thousands) of millions of years.
> > Worked bone could
> > fossilize if left in a depositional environment.
>
> A much better point. Anybody (who knows what they're talking about)
> ever speculate about how much early human debris was disposed of in
> places that would be likely to produce fossils in millions of
> years?
Just about any middens and grave sites in a river flood plain are
prime candidates for fossilization. Since early human civilizations
tended to cluster in river floodplains, I expect they will leave a lot
of fossils.
> > Any widespread civilization would leave signatures of their
> > existence in the trace elements (and/or isotope ratios) found in
> > contemporary strata.
>
> Perhaps they used irridium as a major component in their
> electronics.
Heh, yeah. Although in this case it would be more that it was a waste
product from electronics processing, discharged out the smoke
stacks.
I was thinking more of things like carbon soot from campfires, or lead
and mercury from more industrial societies. There's a lot of
interesting tricks in geochemistry, and I am not an expert in the
field, so there are probably all sorts of interesting ways to tease
out anomalies by looking at odd isotope ratios.
> > In addition to the aforementioned rock and bone tools, you could
> > find burial sites (assuming they had burial customs and did not
> > just, for example, eat their dead), fossilized garbage middens,
> > fossilized bones from prey animals that had been scraped by
> > artificial tools and/or cooked (both methods leave distinctive
> > signs), cooked and externally processed plant food (such as nuts
> > smashed by rock hammers), excavated post-holes for wooden
> > construction, excavated basements for food storage, brick or
> > stone construction, and roads (particularly improved roads or
> > wheel-ruts). True civilization would tend to have extensive
> > durable large-scale works such as defensive walls, roads,
> > granaries (or other food storage sites, if they did not eat
> > grain), temples (if religious), and housing for the elite.
>
> I really have doubts about a lot of that after 65 million years.
> Especially stuff like excavations, when the time frame is long
> enough for continents to move.
Note that footprints fossilize easily. As do things such as ripple
marks from streams and small-scale sand-pile type cascade patterns
from wind driven dunes. If a dino dug holes for posts in a
depositional environment, after the wood rotted away the hole would be
filled with sediment, leaving an obvious plug of rock extending into
lower strata. An excavation for, say, a gravel quarry or a food
storage basement would fill up with sediment that would be distinct
from the surrounding, unexcavated material. There would be an obvious
boundary between them, with an interface typical of digging
implements.
> > As the level of technology increases, the isotopic and elemental
> > signatures become more distinctive. In addition, you will find
> > fossilized metal objects (metal is much more durable than bone,
> > and not degraded by bacteria, so any metal artifacts would tend
> > to get buried and preserved). The metal may be highly oxidized
> > by the time we find it, but a wrench, for example, covered by
> > silt, would still fossilize as a wrench-shaped piece of rust
> > between shale layers.
>
> After 65 million years of geologic activity?
Yes. Rust is chemically stable and does not dissolve readily, and
while you may get leaching out of the wrench cavity in certain
chemical environments, you would still have a cavity in the stone
which would be replaced by something else (precipitation of silica or
calcium carbonate, for example, to give you a quartz or limestone
wrench with a lot of rust trapped in it). A good many of the fully
oxidized metals behave in a similar fashion (copper and silver, for
example), while gold and platinum would remain un-oxidized, and
aluminum oxidizes to fully insoluble and extremely chemically
resistant alumina (a.k.a. emery, corundum, and sapphire) and is also
protected by a passivation layer of alumina that could well preserve
the reduced metal.
> > Glass and ceramic artifacts would also
> > fossilize readily - just look at how easily shells produced by
> > fossilized organisms fossilize. You could find cement,
> > concrete, asphalt, or whatever durable building material they
> > used. Road cuts, quarries, and foundations would leave long
> > lasting geological imprints.
>
> How common is it with today's techniques, to find fossilized
> imprints of skin and feathers, now that we know such things happen?
> Wouldn't it be interesting to find a fossil with an imprint of,
> say, a business suit? Or, better yet, a cowboy hat?
Unfortunately, it is not very common. You need special environments
to preserve soft tissue - usually water without dissolved oxygen and a
source of sediment. Those sites which we do find are quite valuable
from a scientific standpoint.
Now if the business suit was made of synthetic polymers, it might
stand a better chance of preservation. Plastics like rayon and
polyester do break down after a century or so, but they could easily
leave a carbon stain on the shale they are buried in. Since no self
respecting cowboy will wear a synthetic hat, paleo-Stetson fossils
will, sadly, be rare.
Luke
James Burns
>>Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy wrote:
>>>James Burns <burn...@osu.edu> wrote in
>>>news:4B01DCE2...@osu.edu:
>>
>>>>Apparently you are instead happy to be considered
>>>>part of the demographic that considers saying
>>>>we don't know enough to rule something out when
>>>>we don't know enough to rule something out to be
>>>>"wild extrapolations". Congratulations: you are
>>>>considered so now.
>>>
>>>Apparently you are happy to be considered part
>>>of the demographic that snake oil salesmen rely
>>>one to get rich: the gullible.
>>
>>Then, is your position that we SHOULD say we know
>>enough to rule something out when we DON'T know
>>enough to rule it out?
>
> I'm saying you're stupid and gullible.
> Which word don't you understand?
> (I hope it's not "gullible,"
> cuz that one's not in the dictionary.)
Yes, it's pretty clear what you're saying.
What you're NOT saying is what you would do
other than what I would do, tell the truth,
which you won't do because of you not wanting
to be stupid and gullible.
I may be an idiot (so I've been told, anyway),
but even I can see how this adds up: instead of
stupid and gullible, you are dishonest and an asshole
(and stupid, too, as pretending that we know things
that we don't have large long term costs that
swamp whatever short term gains we might have).
But not gullible! (Well, you don't /think/
you're gullible, but, when you look "gullible"
up in the dictionary, guess whose picture is
there?)
>>>>I wouldn't have thought that this needed explaining,
>>>>but not ruling something out is a very different
>>>>action from saying that thing is true, or likely, or
>>>>even worth searching for.
>>>
>>>This does need explaining, or at least pointing out:
>>>you're an idiot.
>>
>>I'll leave it to others to judge that.
>
> I *am* someone "other" than you.
/Good/ boy. That's /another/ gold star for you:
Yes, you are someone other than me.
However, since you are among the differently-brained,
I will explain to you what that means in words of
one syllable (oops, sorry -- "small words"):
I don't give a fuck what you say.
More generally, I got over being smart a long time
ago, so I don't really give a fuck what anyone's
opinion of my intelligence is, including my own
opinion.
These days, I'm more concerned about being right.
Did you have anything to say about being right?
Didn't think so.
>>It's more my concern that, if I am an idiot, I will
>>at least be an honest idiot.
>
> I'd much rather be a smart asshole.
Shocked. That's what I am, shocked.
Jim Burns
Erik Max Francis
Well, you're invoking a gag award for people who invented amusing things
or wrote amusing papers (for those who want to nag about the "laugh,
then think" mantra, remember it starts with "laugh"). Not all of those
things were funded by explicit grant; in fact, it looks like many of
them weren't (anybody can write a paper and submit it to arXiv, for
instance).
Further, the ones that _do_ look like they were funded by grants were
certainly not expensive ones compared to the kind you're talking about,
namely an attempt to perform a worldwide search to find evidence of a
long-extinct civilization for which there isn't the slightest inkling of
a hint that one might be there to find.
Sure, dumbass grants get approved all the time; you're talking about a
different order of magnitude in required funding, at the very least.
Probably several compared to some of these gag examples.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM/Y!M/Skype erikmaxfrancis
Ipsa scientia potestas est. "Knowledge itself is power."
-- (a Latin proverb)
James Burns
> On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:42:56 -0500, Jim Burns
> <burn...@osu.edu> wrote:
>
>>I just have to point out, though, that there are
>>a lot of different meanings to "science".
>>Sometimes it means "something so well established
>>we can print it in textbooks with a good chance of
>>not sounding like an idiot in a few years".
>
> That's when you take off your scientist's hat and
> become an academician.
I used the reference to textbooks as a way to describe
a certain level of well-established-ness, that's all.
Is there something wrong with having textbooks?
Where do you propose to get the baby scientists from?
>>Sometimes it means "given all we know, this is
>>our best honest attempt at stating what is the case".
>
> If all they ever do is try to figure out the last
> decimal place or make sure all the lists are alphabetized,
> they're not scientists -- they are, at best,
> technicians, scholars, or interpreters.
I'm not sure why you're writing about last decimal places
here, but apparently you have something against technicians,
scholars and interpreters, as well as textbooks.
Those are all important parts of the scientific enterprise,
as you would quickly learn if you tried to do science
without them.
(Full disclosure: I am a technician, toiling in obscurity
at a research university, but part of what makes it worth
getting up in the morning is that I am contributing,
in a small way, to the advancement science.) (Of course,
it is a very, very, ..., very rare person whose
contributions are NOT small.)
>>Sometimes it only means "given the little bit we know,
>>we can't rule this out."
>
> That is the real scientist, the "anything is possible
> unless science proves otherwise" people. Everything from
> DNA being a helix to the concept of a chain reaction
> was a "we've never seen anything like this and there's
> no reason to believe it's true, but we can't rule it out"
> situation.
I don't know if you've noticed, but I have drawn a
remarkable level of anger from Terry Austin and
Derek Lyons over this one sentence of mine. (Or maybe
it shouldn't be remarkable, and they do this thing
all the time. I don't pay enough attention to them
to know.)
Anyway, I feel like I should point out that the
problem with "anything is possible" is that ANYTHING
is possible. That's no problem for a science fiction
writer, but a scientist wants to move from the possible
to the actual, and the actual is <insert bizarre simile/>
smaller than the possible. (I couldn't come up with
an image appropriate to the difference, so I punted.)
Something being possible is just nowhere near good
enough a reason to spend finite resources on looking
for it (and resources will always be finite).
This is not to say that we can't have things pop out of
the Possible and go "BOO!". Here're some examples off
the top of my head: penicillin, X-ray photographs,
high temperature superconductors, low temperature
superconductors, buckminsterfullerenes, cold fusion.
But there is no research program available.
"Go look at what's possible!" "Starting WHERE?!"
Did I hear a nasal whine from the back of the room?
"But you listed cold fusion. Cold fusion is bullshit."
Yes, my darlings. Cold fusion is bullshit. However,
the interesting thing is that the physicists who tried
to replicate the reported results were pretty sure
to start with that cold fusion was bullshit, but
they went ahead and invested their time and palladium
in trying to replicate it anyway. (No, it wasn't
because of the Big Payoff; that would go to Pons
and Fleischmann.) Even though they saw it as very
likely to turn out bullshit, the Pons and Fleischmann
report moved cold fusion from the GINORMOUS pool of
ideas called "Possible. Eh. So what?" to the MUCH,
MUCH SMALLER, highly elite pool of ideas called
"<sigh> Well, it's a little more probable than a
lot of other things. Why not?"
If you're doing science fiction, then anything that
is possible is good enough (for some purposes). If
you want to do science, though, you need some way to
narrow your focus enough that you would actually
be able to accomplish something besides speculation.
> In order to keep the 'science' in 'science fiction,'
> a writer should, imo, keep the same attitude.
If a writer wants to keep their sense of wonder and
keep their readers, then I agree with you. If a writer
wants to focus on science, then I think popular
science is a more appropriate genre.
Jim Burns
George W Harris
wrote:
>On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:06:41 -0700, Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net>
>wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:40:08 -0800 (PST), Allen Thomson
>><thom...@flash.net> wrote:
>>
>>>What about glass bottles that sink in deep water, become covered with
>>>sediment that later turns to rock? Will the 100-megayear-from-now
>>>geologists find the Coke Bottle Stratum?
>>
>>Find some sacred ponds where we used to sacrifice our golf balls.
>
>Like Loch Ness?
>
><http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/11/loch-ness-golf-balls>
>
>Since the zinc from the decomposing golf balls will not spread widely,
>could we look at high concentrations of metals in very localized
>regions of sedimentary rock as evidence of dinosaurs manipulating
>their environment?
So your saying that dinosaur golf balls had iridium cores?
--
Doesn't the fact that there are *exactly* 50 states seem a little suspicious?
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
Erik Max Francis
> On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:39:33 -0600, Jyme <jym...@dialup4less.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:06:41 -0700, Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:40:08 -0800 (PST), Allen Thomson
>>> <thom...@flash.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> What about glass bottles that sink in deep water, become covered with
>>>> sediment that later turns to rock? Will the 100-megayear-from-now
>>>> geologists find the Coke Bottle Stratum?
>>> Find some sacred ponds where we used to sacrifice our golf balls.
>> Like Loch Ness?
>>
>> <http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/11/loch-ness-golf-balls>
>>
>> Since the zinc from the decomposing golf balls will not spread widely,
>> could we look at high concentrations of metals in very localized
>> regions of sedimentary rock as evidence of dinosaurs manipulating
>> their environment?
>
> So your saying that dinosaur golf balls had iridium cores?
Oh, come on now, don't be silly. It's was their golf _clubs_ that were
made of iridium. That's just basic cryptozoolopaleontology.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM/Y!M/Skype erikmaxfrancis
If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?
-- Lily Tomlin
Bill Snyder
<m...@alcyone.com> wrote:
>George W Harris wrote:
>> On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:39:33 -0600, Jyme <jym...@dialup4less.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:06:41 -0700, Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:40:08 -0800 (PST), Allen Thomson
>>>> <thom...@flash.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> What about glass bottles that sink in deep water, become covered with
>>>>> sediment that later turns to rock? Will the 100-megayear-from-now
>>>>> geologists find the Coke Bottle Stratum?
>>>> Find some sacred ponds where we used to sacrifice our golf balls.
>>> Like Loch Ness?
>>>
>>> <http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/11/loch-ness-golf-balls>
>>>
>>> Since the zinc from the decomposing golf balls will not spread widely,
>>> could we look at high concentrations of metals in very localized
>>> regions of sedimentary rock as evidence of dinosaurs manipulating
>>> their environment?
>>
>> So your saying that dinosaur golf balls had iridium cores?
>
>Oh, come on now, don't be silly. It's was their golf _clubs_ that were
>made of iridium. That's just basic cryptozoolopaleontology.
I don't think either theory is tenable; not enough mass. It must
have been the golf _carts_.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
Erik Max Francis
Wait, the _golfers_! [audience: Ooooooooh.]
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM/Y!M/Skype erikmaxfrancis
I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw the
Earth from space. -- Gen. Aleksei Leonov
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
om:
> On Nov 17, 1:22�pm, Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
> <tausti...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Luke Campbell <lwc...@gmail.com> wrote
>> innews:9ab2b155-5164-4882-8be3-098
> 9cae...@x6g2000prc.googlegroups.c
>> om:
>>
>> > Essentially, they would have been limited to stick-and-hide
>> > technology. �Stone is durable and worked stone tools would be
>> > distinctive (scrapers, axe-heads, spear tips, hammers,
>> > mortars and pestles, and the like are all early uses humans
>> > had for stone; all leave long lived relics).
>>
>> None even approach 65 million years, though. In fact, none are
>> within an order of magnitude.
>
> However, Cretaceous rocks are with us in large quantities, and
> the processes that shaped them are evident to a trained eye.
> For example, the cracks and chips of breccia are clear even
> after tens (or hundreds, or thousands) of millions of years.
If you're looking for something specific, there's only one right
answer.
>
>> > Worked bone could
>> > fossilize if left in a depositional environment.
>>
>> A much better point. Anybody (who knows what they're talking
>> about) ever speculate about how much early human debris was
>> disposed of in places that would be likely to produce fossils
>> in millions of years?
>
> Just about any middens and grave sites in a river flood plain
> are prime candidates for fossilization. Since early human
> civilizations tended to cluster in river floodplains, I expect
> they will leave a lot of fossils.
Unless they are disturbed by future habitation, which (if current
trends continue) could well be more environmentally conscious. But
one would expect at least some to turn up, I imagine.
>
>> > Any widespread civilization would leave signatures of their
>> > existence in the trace elements (and/or isotope ratios) found
>> > in contemporary strata.
>>
>> Perhaps they used irridium as a major component in their
>> electronics.
>
> Heh, yeah. Although in this case it would be more that it was a
> waste product from electronics processing, discharged out the
> smoke stacks.
Well, maybe the factory exploded. Real big.
>
> I was thinking more of things like carbon soot from campfires,
> or lead and mercury from more industrial societies. There's a
> lot of interesting tricks in geochemistry, and I am not an
> expert in the field, so there are probably all sorts of
> interesting ways to tease out anomalies by looking at odd
> isotope ratios.
The question is, has anybody looked (who isn't an obvious loon,
like Ed Conrad).
Unless geologic movement mixed it all up. What percentage of the
earth's surface is that young? (I'm guessing, from what you say, a
large enough percentage that we would expect to find at least a few
such places, but would we recognize them as such if we were
expecting something else?)
>
>> > As the level of technology increases, the isotopic and
>> > elemental signatures become more distinctive. �In addition,
>> > you will find fossilized metal objects (metal is much more
>> > durable than bone, and not degraded by bacteria, so any metal
>> > artifacts would tend to get buried and preserved). �The metal
>> > may be highly oxidized by the time we find it, but a wrench,
>> > for example, covered by silt, would still fossilize as a
>> > wrench-shaped piece of rust between shale layers.
>>
>> After 65 million years of geologic activity?
>
> Yes. Rust is chemically stable and does not dissolve readily,
> and while you may get leaching out of the wrench cavity in
> certain chemical environments, you would still have a cavity in
> the stone which would be replaced by something else
> (precipitation of silica or calcium carbonate, for example, to
> give you a quartz or limestone wrench with a lot of rust trapped
> in it). A good many of the fully oxidized metals behave in a
> similar fashion (copper and silver, for example), while gold and
> platinum would remain un-oxidized, and aluminum oxidizes to
> fully insoluble and extremely chemically resistant alumina
> (a.k.a. emery, corundum, and sapphire) and is also protected by
> a passivation layer of alumina that could well preserve the
> reduced metal.
How stable is the shape after that long, though? Would it still be
definitively wrench-shaped, or would it slowly bloat in to more of
a blog shape, before fossilizing?
>
>> > Glass and ceramic artifacts would also
>> > fossilize readily - just look at how easily shells produced
>> > by fossilized organisms fossilize. �You could find cement,
>> > concrete, asphalt, or whatever durable building material they
>> > used. �Road cuts, quarries, and foundations would leave long
>> > lasting geological imprints.
>>
>> How common is it with today's techniques, to find fossilized
>> imprints of skin and feathers, now that we know such things
>> happen? Wouldn't it be interesting to find a fossil with an
>> imprint of, say, a business suit? Or, better yet, a cowboy hat?
>
> Unfortunately, it is not very common. You need special
> environments to preserve soft tissue - usually water without
> dissolved oxygen and a source of sediment. Those sites which we
> do find are quite valuable from a scientific standpoint.
I'm not thinking of the soft tissue itself, but rather, the imprint
of it in the surrounding mud, which slowly becomes stone as well. I
know such things exist, it's how we know that at least some
dinosaurs had feathers. Basically, the same process as a footprint
fossilizing.
>
> Now if the business suit was made of synthetic polymers, it
> might stand a better chance of preservation. Plastics like
> rayon and polyester do break down after a century or so, but
> they could easily leave a carbon stain on the shale they are
> buried in. Since no self respecting cowboy will wear a
> synthetic hat, paleo-Stetson fossils will, sadly, be rare.
>
So we're looking for yuppie dinos riding tricked out Harleys in
their business suits?
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
@osu.edu:
The truth is, you're an idiot. A gullible idiot, willing to swallow
whatever fantasy you're spoon fed.
In the real world, people (who aren't retards, like you) don't
worry about shit that doesn't amtter.
>
> I may be an idiot (so I've been told, anyway),
You are.
> but even I can see how this adds up: instead of
> stupid and gullible, you are dishonest and an asshole
Dishonest? No, son, I really do think you're an idiot. I'm not
lying about that. Really.
> (and stupid, too, as pretending that we know things
> that we don't have large long term costs that
> swamp whatever short term gains we might have).
Feel free to quote me saying we know something we don't know. Be
specific. Include a MessageID. Or admit you're just lying.
>
> But not gullible! (Well, you don't /think/
> you're gullible, but, when you look "gullible"
> up in the dictionary, guess whose picture is
> there?)
Yours. It's also next to "idiot," "dumbass," "retard," "mark," and
a whole bunch of other derogatory terms.
>
>>>>>I wouldn't have thought that this needed explaining,
>>>>>but not ruling something out is a very different
>>>>>action from saying that thing is true, or likely, or
>>>>>even worth searching for.
>>>>
>>>>This does need explaining, or at least pointing out:
>>>>you're an idiot.
>>>
>>>I'll leave it to others to judge that.
>>
>> I *am* someone "other" than you.
>
> /Good/ boy. That's /another/ gold star for you:
> Yes, you are someone other than me.
Ergo, you agree it's my place to judge you.
>
> However, since you are among the differently-brained,
> I will explain to you what that means in words of
> one syllable (oops, sorry -- "small words"):
>
> I don't give a fuck what you say.
Retards never do care what normal people say. It's a distinguishing
characteristic of the true dumbass, in fact.
>
> More generally, I got over being smart a long time
> ago, so I don't really give a fuck what anyone's
> opinion of my intelligence is, including my own
> opinion.
QED. Compete and utter retard, resigned to being utterly
irrelevant.
>
> These days, I'm more concerned about being right.
> Did you have anything to say about being right?
You fail at that, too, son. Really. You're completely full of shit,
you know it, and you've admitted you know it.
>
> Didn't think so.
^
You left out a comma.
>
>>>It's more my concern that, if I am an idiot, I will
>>>at least be an honest idiot.
>>
>> I'd much rather be a smart asshole.
>
> Shocked. That's what I am, shocked.
>
Preferably with high voltage, in your testicles, since excrutiating
pain is the only possible way you could ever learn anything.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:j947g5pnb8p9of5t6...@4ax.com:
Or the golf courses, which all exploded at the same time. Not that
we haven't all wanted to blow up golf courses at some point.
Brian Davis
<tausti...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So we're looking for yuppie dinos riding tricked out Harleys in
> their business suits?
Good. Now the next time I'm on a fossil hunt, I have a concrete
example to be keeping an eye out for.
--
Brian Davis
Michael Stemper
>In rec.arts.sf.science message <hdsgjr$2lb$1...@news.albasani.net>, Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:37:42, Ryan McCoskrie <ryan.mc...@invalid.invalid> posted:
>>Jyme wrote:
>>> A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and yet left
>>> few or no relics that survived millions of years?
>>
>>One which is very good at and very keen on recycling could go completely
>>unnoticed IMO.
In some time lines, David Brin wrote a book about a people who
lived that way. Fortunately, that didn't happen here.
>Keen enough to clear up Pompeii?
>
>Regular trade over deep seas must have been established by about BC
>1000. A consequence is frequent sinking of artefacts.
The other night, I watched _Journey to the Center of the Earth_. At
the end, the James Mason character states that, since they came back
with no evidence of their journey, it was scientifically a failure.
However, a few minutes (film time) earlier, we saw the altar stone
from Atlantis settling gently to the bottom of the Mediterranean.
Some pearl divers could have attached ropes to this.
(Posting this nit-pickiness makes me feel like TSB.)
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Reunite Gondwanaland!
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
fa9758...@m38g2000yqd.googlegroups.com:
Very good. Cuz nobody ever *has* looked for evidence of a
technologically advanced dino civilization, and we know how
scientists all conspire against anyone who tries to rock the boat and
all.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:he1f44$5lf$2...@news.eternal-september.org:
> In article
> <ftIXvIRe...@invalid.uk.co.demon.merlyn.invalid>, Dr J R
> Stockton <repl...@merlyn.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>In rec.arts.sf.science message <hdsgjr$2lb$1...@news.albasani.net>,
>>Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:37:42, Ryan McCoskrie
>><ryan.mc...@invalid.invalid> posted:
>>>Jyme wrote:
>
>>>> A) How advanced could a dinosaur civilization have been and
>>>> yet left few or no relics that survived millions of years?
>>>
>>>One which is very good at and very keen on recycling could go
>>>completely unnoticed IMO.
>
> In some time lines, David Brin wrote a book about a people who
> lived that way. Fortunately, that didn't happen here.
If it had, how would we know?
(And you have to admit, we do assume that past civilizations do not
deliberately try to hide from us.)
Derek Lyons
>On Nov 17, 12:40�am, fairwa...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:
>> >She wasn't quite that oblivious, since her characters' spear points, for
>> >example, were made of a glass, or glass-like material, that broke down
>> >over time. Don't recall if lack of maintenance or just enough time did
>> >it.
>>
>> On the contrary - your example shows just how oblivious she was... �As
>> glass doesn't break down over time.
>
>Not chemically, no. Maybe the original reference was to glass/ceramic
>tools being worn out with use, rather than decaying.
Even so, it would remain reconizeable as "being worn beyond
usefulness" is considerably short of "worn beyond recognition".
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
Derek Lyons
>Derek Lyons wrote:
>> James Burns <burn...@osu.edu> wrote:
>>>Derek Lyons wrote:
>>>>Jim Burns <burn...@osu.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>I just have to point out, though, that there are
>>>>>a lot of different meanings to "science".
>>>>>Sometimes it means "something so well established
>>>>>we can print it in textbooks with a good chance of
>>>>>not sounding like an idiot in a few years".
>>>>>Sometimes it means "given all we know, this is
>>>>>our best honest attempt at stating what is the case".
>>>>>Sometimes it only means "given the little bit we know,
>>>>>we can't rule this out."
>>>>
>>>>The difference is only significant to handwavers,
>>>>smokescreen generators, and those otherwise seeking
>>>>reasons to be dismissive of science.
>>>
>>>You say that the difference between "something so well
>>>established we can print it in textbooks with a good
>>>chance of not sounding like an idiot in a few years" and
>>>"given the little bit we know, we can't rule this out"
>>>is insignificant?
>>
>> Yes, utterly and completely insignificant.
>
>Then you're wrong.
An assumption you only seem capable of supporting by personal insult
embedded in further handwaving and smoke blowing.
James Burns
YOU are offended by personal insult?! Good one.
Nice snip, by the way.
James Burns
>
>>(and stupid, too, as pretending that we know things
>>that we don't have large long term costs that
>>swamp whatever short term gains we might have).
>
> Feel free to quote me saying we know something
> we don't know. Be specific. Include a MessageID.
> Or admit you're just lying.
:>> Then, is your position that we SHOULD say we know
:>> enough to rule something out when we DON'T know
:>> enough to rule it out?
:
:I'm saying you're stupid and gullible. Which word
:don't you understand? (I hope it's not "gullible,"
:cuz that one's not in the dictionary.)
Message-ID: <Xns9CC686BF69A...@69.16.186.7>
Now go bore somebody else.
Damien Valentine
move their flame war to a separate thread? You've gone far beyond the
point where your responses have anything to do with the original topic.
Dr J R Stockton
om>, Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:39:33, Jyme <jym...@dialup4less.com> posted:
It is much easier to detect some of a set of artefacts lost in a
particular environment than it is to clear up almost all of them.
The civilised dinosaurs would have had to clear up not only evidence of
their own existence but that left by their less careful predecessors.
Just think what it would cost the USA to restore their country to what
it was like 400 years ago. Mending Mount Rushmore alone would cost ...
--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05.
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - w. FAQish topics, links, acronyms
PAS EXE etc : <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/programs/> - see 00index.htm
Dates - miscdate.htm estrdate.htm js-dates.htm pas-time.htm critdate.htm etc.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
@osu.edu:
Which does not say anything at all about the subject of science and
lack of evidence. In point of fact, it refers only to *you*, and
calls you stupid and gullible, which you've agreed you are.
And now you're just a liar, as well.
Which I predicted.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:9aef93a3-13c0-492f...@k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.
com:
> I hate to be a bother, but could Misters Burns, Umbrella, etc.
> please move their flame war to a separate thread?
Seems unlikely.
> You've gone
> far beyond the point where your responses have anything to do
> with the original topic.
>
So have you. Given that he's too fucking stupid to be capable of
any meaningful discussion of any subject more complicated than
"Would you like fries with that" and that I'm just a trolling
asshole, you might benefit from learning how to simply killfile us
both.
Oh, wait, you're posting through DejaGoogle. OK, you're too stupid
to be of any use, too.
alie...@gmail.com
Especially since the one seemed to be thinking of things like String
theory, and the other of things like homeopathy, as things that can't
be ruled out at our current state of little knowledge.
But they're too busy jerking off each other's "fuck you" bone to
consider elucidating their positions.
I'm tempted to killfile the both of them.
Mark L. Fergerson
alie...@gmail.com
alie...@gmail.com
Oops, please ignore previous, and this, accidental reply.
Mark L. Fergerson
Bill Snyder
No.
alie...@gmail.com
> Jyme wrote:
> > On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:42:56 -0500, Jim Burns
(snip to the crash)
> >>Sometimes it only means "given the little bit we know,
> >>we can't rule this out."
>
> > That is the real scientist, the "anything is possible
> > unless science proves otherwise" people. Everything from
> > DNA being a helix to the concept of a chain reaction
> > was a "we've never seen anything like this and there's
> > no reason to believe it's true, but we can't rule it out"
> > situation.
>
> I don't know if you've noticed, but I have drawn a
> remarkable level of anger from Terry Austin and
> Derek Lyons over this one sentence of mine. (Or maybe
> it shouldn't be remarkable, and they do this thing
> all the time. I don't pay enough attention to them
> to know.)
I believe you meant by "this", things like String Theory, whereas
the other two assumed you meant things like, oh, say homeopathy.
Please be less nebulous next time.
Thank you.
Mark L. Fergerson
Michael Stemper
>Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy wrote:
>I may be an idiot (so I've been told, anyway),
>but even I can see how this adds up: instead of
>stupid and gullible, you are dishonest and an asshole
>(and stupid, too, as pretending that we know things
Terry's neither dishonest nor stupid.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.
Erik Max Francis
Yeah, I can't even follow what they're supposed to be yelling at each
other about, nor do I particularly want to find out.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM/Y!M/Skype erikmaxfrancis
God said: "Let Newton be"; and all was light.
-- Alexander Pope
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:e8d08b99-6487-424c...@t11g2000prh.googlegroups.
com:
I recommend you do so.