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C Alternative funds have unique risks including

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1:18

Adam Frank the weirder a question is the

1:20

better you know you're like oh yeah and

1:22

we think is referred to arrive a good

1:24

at through it so that's that's the best

1:26

questions that you do that you hadn't. Adams.

1:29

And astrophysicists who's interested in looking

1:31

for life in deep space. And

1:33

a few years back, he had

1:35

a thought I was interested in.

1:37

Amazingly enough, I was interested in

1:39

whether or not aliens trigger climate

1:41

change on their own planet that

1:43

we've literally. Maybe. Rapid climate change

1:46

on a faraway planet could be a

1:48

sign of an advanced civilization. You.

1:50

Know maybe any civilization.

1:52

That. Has to mature through the phase that

1:55

we're going through. Will do this. Adam. wanted

1:57

a second opinion so he started running

1:59

his idea by some climate scientists. And of

2:01

course, this is a pretty crazy idea. It's like, hey,

2:03

I want to talk to you about aliens and climate

2:05

change. So I always have to sort of do this

2:07

backpedaling because I expect people to raise their eyebrows. Which

2:10

is exactly the reaction he kept

2:12

getting until he got

2:14

to Gavin Schmidt. Yeah, so I mean, I

2:16

have nothing against being slightly odd and

2:20

that's perhaps part of my

2:22

persona. Gavin's a climate

2:24

scientist at NASA. And so I go in and that's

2:26

the first thing I drop on Gavin's lap is, you

2:28

know, I want to talk about climate change and aliens

2:30

because I said, you know, of course there's never been

2:33

another civilization on Earth, you know, and that's as far

2:35

as I got when he said, well, how do you

2:37

know there's never been another civilization on Earth? And he

2:39

says, what? And I said, well, yeah,

2:41

how do you know that

2:44

we are the first technological species on Earth?

2:47

And I was like, you know, it's just

2:49

like instant break and my draw is on

2:51

the floor. And I kind

2:53

of floored him for a little bit because I

2:55

don't think he'd ever thought about it. Yeah, I

2:57

was just sort of stung because of course, like

3:00

I never thought about that. Of course there's never

3:02

been another civilization on Earth before. To

3:06

be clear, Gavin was suggesting that

3:08

there might have been an advanced

3:10

technological species on Earth before

3:13

humans. This was

3:15

a radical idea for anyone, but

3:17

especially for Adam and other astrophysicists who

3:19

were looking for extraterrestrial life. They were

3:22

looking in space, but I'm saying, well,

3:24

no, look in time as well. It

3:27

was like one of those things like those telescoping moments in a dream when

3:29

you're like, weeeeeeeew. And

3:33

suddenly I had this feeling of deep time,

3:35

like suddenly dropping back into the Earth, you

3:37

know, 10 million, 30 million, 100 million year

3:39

history, just like, you

3:41

know, expanding in front of me. You know,

3:43

it was a vertigo. It was kind of

3:46

temporal vertigo that I had. Even for Adam,

3:48

this was just a whole new level of

3:50

strange. I came in thinking like, wow, there's

3:52

nobody who's going to talk about anything weirder

3:54

than I have with climate change and aliens.

3:56

And in five seconds, he outweirded me. And

3:58

initially it was a joke. It was like, oh,

4:00

you know, this is just a fun thought. And he said, well,

4:02

actually, that's a very deep thought. How would we know what

4:05

would be left? I'm

4:10

Noam Hasenfeld, and this week on

4:12

Unexplainable, the search for terrestrial intelligence.

4:16

Last week, we talked about the search for

4:18

intelligent life in deep space. So

4:21

this week we wanted to share a favorite

4:23

episode of ours that flips that search towards

4:25

our own planet. Are

4:28

humans really the first technologically

4:30

advanced species on Earth? And

4:32

if there were an intelligent,

4:34

industrialized civilization, millions of years

4:37

before us, how

4:39

would we know? You're

4:47

looking at a kind of world that hasn't existed for

4:49

millions of years. Hasn't existed.

4:52

Millions, millions, millions. It's almost

4:54

as if time forgot this

4:56

place. Is there life on Mars?

4:59

There's a whole universe out there, Steve.

5:01

Beyond anyone's comprehension. Let's

5:05

just start with some context on the scale of

5:07

things. When you hear ancient

5:10

civilizations, you're probably thinking of

5:12

humans, maybe the Egyptians or the

5:14

Mayans or the Babylonians, but

5:16

when you zoom out, those societies were

5:18

doing their thing pretty recently, just a

5:21

few thousand years ago. Gavin

5:23

and Adam were focusing on a time

5:25

millions of years before humans even evolved

5:28

and all that time before humans is

5:30

just enormous. To

5:34

paraphrase Douglas Adams, the universe

5:36

is very, very big. So

5:39

deep time is very, very big. Space

5:41

is big enough that it's easy to assume

5:43

there must be alien life out there. But

5:46

deep time is pretty enormous too. Animal

5:49

life has been on land for 400 million

5:51

years and modern humans have only

5:54

been around for a tiny fraction of that,

5:56

Not even half a million. So

5:58

Is there space?? Oh

6:01

other kind of species to

6:03

come as evolves develops, become

6:05

industrial a over the world

6:07

and and disappear. Yeah, There's.

6:09

A lot of space. But it's pretty

6:12

hard to imagine what an ancient technological

6:14

species from Earth might have been like.

6:16

Science. Fiction is full of stories of

6:19

intelligent aliens from other worlds, but

6:21

when Gavin and Adam tried to find

6:23

Psi Phi about aliens from Earth, they

6:25

didn't find much. The earliest example they

6:28

came across at the time was

6:30

from some nineteen seventy Doctor Who episodes

6:32

about a species called the Civilians and

6:34

the Solutions Where I am they

6:36

would normally I have some dessert type

6:39

with to them I did that was

6:41

woken up but is is some you

6:43

know strange nuclear tests, some alien

6:45

life form as. Intelligent as we're

6:47

and they were an indigenous

6:50

species they went. Aliens are

6:52

an endangered species see. The.

6:58

Had got in trouble for themselves to sleep

7:00

and then wicking up the same overuse in

7:02

doing on off last. Chance.

7:10

So. With Doctor Who and Mind, Gavin

7:12

and Adam wrote a paper they called the

7:14

Savoury and Hypothesis. It. Was basically

7:16

a thought experiment. How would

7:19

we know if a species

7:21

like the Sumerians, intelligent, technological,

7:23

industrialized. How would we know

7:25

if they existed millions of

7:27

years before humans? To. Find

7:29

an answer. They needed to know what kind

7:31

of evidence to look for. So. Instead

7:33

of turning to the past, they imagined

7:36

going into the far future and looking

7:38

back on the remnants of our civilization.

7:41

If. Our society collapses, whether it's because

7:43

of an asteroid or a pandemic

7:45

or apocalyptic climate change, and some

7:47

future scientists are looking for signs

7:49

of us millions of years from

7:51

now. Are they gonna know we

7:53

were here? We. Started off by

7:55

kind of framing and with what

7:57

would we see if we were.

8:00

Looking. Back at our

8:02

current period. through the lens

8:04

a geological history. Where.

8:07

Are you gonna see our

8:09

traces? Be. Idea that

8:11

there would only be traces of us might

8:14

seem a little surprising at first. But.

8:16

Even humanities most impressive monuments won't

8:18

make it. The Eiffel Tower,

8:20

The Great Wall of Pyramids. Winds

8:22

of the Pyramid Sir are you

8:24

know of full size as Nissl?

8:26

Things like that has has stuck

8:28

around for thousands of years, but

8:30

not. Hundreds of as As

8:32

and not through and I said cycle

8:34

and not millions. It

8:37

can be a little destabilizing if you really think about

8:39

it. Humanity. As a whole

8:41

can sometimes feel like it or just keep

8:43

going on forever. But. On

8:46

the scale of millions and millions of

8:48

years. Forever just takes on

8:50

a different meaning. There.

8:53

Will be ice ages, slides,

8:55

fires, erosion reigns wins places.

8:58

see until the entire surface

9:00

of the earth is completely

9:03

turned off and are in.

9:10

That sense either. The oldest existing surface

9:12

that still the surface is basically the

9:14

Negev Desert which is about in a

9:17

one point seven million years old. If.

9:19

The entire history of animal life and

9:22

land were equal to the length of

9:24

a day. The surface of the negative

9:26

would only be about six minutes old.

9:28

And that's the oldest surface on earth.

9:31

Everywhere. Else has been erased

9:33

by places seize up by

9:36

forests dissolved by rained, eroded

9:38

by wins has fallen into

9:40

the ocean because of earthquakes.

9:42

Everything else has been reworked

9:45

or burst. Just

9:50

think about that last been from planned to be

9:52

apes. The. Statue of Liberty is

9:54

already half underwater, and that's only something

9:57

like two thousand years into the future.

10:00

Really? When

10:05

Gavin is wondering what would be left

10:07

of us and millions of years, he's

10:09

imagining a point thousands of times further

10:12

and the Planet of the Apes future.

10:14

It's honestly hard to wrap your mind

10:16

around. So.

10:27

Buildings won't be around to prove we were

10:29

here in millions of years. But.

10:31

What about fossils? Things can get

10:33

fossilized but very little guns. It's

10:35

actually pretty hard to end up

10:37

as a fossil either to be

10:39

very unlucky. Ah success. You'd have

10:41

to pretty much fall into a

10:43

top it or get caught in

10:45

an ass flow from a big

10:47

volcano. But not good night so

10:49

it hasn't It can be so

10:51

warm that you fry. You have

10:53

taken a foreigner swamp exactly at

10:55

the right time so that you

10:57

get preserve but did have brought

10:59

and when you think. About it

11:01

in context, we haven't really

11:04

found that many fossils. The

11:06

number of individual dinosaurs whose

11:08

fossils we've found is basically

11:10

one individual. Every ten thousand

11:12

is for more than one

11:14

hundred million. So we found

11:16

a lot of dinosaurs. But.

11:19

In terms of the percentage dinosaurs the

11:21

ever lives that we found, it's a

11:23

tiny tiny fraction. Fossils. Of

11:26

us also probably wouldn't show that we

11:28

were technologically advanced and given how unlikely

11:30

it is for anything to fossilize in

11:32

the first place. It's. A pretty

11:34

unreliable way to guarantee that the future

11:36

would know about us. But.

11:38

All this lack of evidence isn't

11:41

exactly surprising. It's very unlikely you're

11:43

gonna find somebody had a hobby of

11:45

insane hi i'm at Citizens was realization

11:47

instead. Gavin says if we were to

11:49

look back on us from the far

11:51

future. We. Might be able to

11:53

find things we didn't mean to leave

11:56

behind what we're detecting them were looking

11:58

at all impact. Is our way. Not

12:00

are ours is not our literature.

12:02

It so detritus. So. The question

12:05

is. Where are we gonna

12:07

see this waste And the answer is

12:09

you gonna see it in the ocean

12:11

sediments? Sit on, see it in the

12:13

car things the get compacted insists sedimentary

12:15

rocks and you're gonna see this the

12:18

last of the Anthropocene. The

12:21

Anthropocene is sometimes defined as the period

12:24

in which humanity has impacted the geologic

12:26

record, which you can see in various

12:28

layers of sediment. As. The

12:31

surface of the earth gets burnt

12:33

and flooded and eroded over millions

12:35

and millions of years, Different layers of

12:37

rock start to form. Each layer corresponds

12:39

to a different period of time and

12:42

scientists can read these layers like a

12:44

block. So. If we traveled

12:46

millions of years into the future and we were

12:48

trying to read the layer of the Anthropocene. Cabins.

12:51

Corridor Adam, Frank says we would

12:53

be able to recognize it by

12:56

looking at particular atoms in the

12:58

sediment called isotopes. Isotopes are versions

13:00

of elements that have more or

13:02

less neutrons. Elements are defined by

13:04

how many protons they have. So

13:07

for example, carbon always has six

13:09

protons, but they're a bunch of

13:11

different carbon isotopes. You know? There's

13:13

Carbon Twelve, and his garden thirty

13:15

The thirteen parties. Like there's an

13:18

extra neutron in. It. And we

13:20

can learn a lot about the past

13:22

just from looking at ancient isotopes. Isotopes

13:24

become either clocks for monitors is all

13:26

different kinds of ways in which you

13:28

can use those isotopes to read the

13:30

history of the planet. Burning.

13:32

fossil fuels gives off a particular kind

13:34

of carbon isotope and all these isotopes

13:37

gradually settle into the sediment over time

13:39

so if we were looking back and

13:41

the anthropocene from fifty million years in

13:43

the future would be able to see

13:46

our fossil fuel use in the geologic

13:48

record and we know that the signature

13:50

of carbon isotopes sticks around for hundreds

13:52

of millions of years but gavin says

13:55

that's not the only sign we'll see

13:57

but as his message sense and nitrogen

13:59

isotopes We'll see this because of the

14:01

massive amounts of artificial fertilizer we put

14:03

into the ground. We're going to see

14:05

global warming, the temperature changes. We're going

14:07

to see all these spikes and heavy

14:09

metals. Because we're mining them, throwing them

14:11

into the ocean as waste. We

14:14

might even see a layer of

14:16

plastic. Plastics may be maintained for

14:18

many, many hundreds of million years.

14:23

All in all, if we disappear tomorrow

14:25

and some future scientists researching for evidence

14:27

of us, the proof

14:29

of our advanced technology from the invention of

14:32

farming to the invention of the iPhone, it'll

14:35

be tiny. And unless a

14:37

layer of plastic ends up surviving that long, this

14:40

future scientist would then have to wonder, is

14:43

the change they're noticing in the

14:45

isotopes really evidence of a civilization?

14:48

Or could it just be some sort of natural

14:50

blip? All you see

14:52

when you do the measurements is that

14:54

the temperature changed, or

14:56

the nitrogen isotopes changed, or the carbon

14:58

isotopes changed, or that there was

15:01

this spike in metals. And there's all sorts of

15:04

natural reasons why that could have

15:06

happened. Right? So the question is, how

15:08

would you know? This

15:17

question, how would you know? It

15:19

was something Gavin would have to answer as he turned

15:22

his attention to the deep past. Because

15:24

he had a pretty intriguing 56 million

15:27

year old clue. But was

15:29

it actually the sign of an ancient

15:31

technologically advanced civilization? That's

15:34

next. I

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chose Mercury because I

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feel like as an entrepreneur,

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my goal is to try to build a product

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and more than 100,000 entrepreneurs like him

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18:35

Unexplainable, we're back. When we left off,

18:37

climate scientist Gavin Schmidt was imagining what

18:39

might be left of us in the

18:41

far future, millions of years after humanity

18:44

has disappeared. But if future

18:46

scientists do see evidence of climate change

18:48

in the geologic record, how

18:50

are they going to know it's because of us? How

18:52

would they know it's not a natural blip? Turns

18:58

out, years before Adam ever came to his

19:00

office, Gavin and other climate

19:02

scientists were looking at ancient records of

19:04

climate change, seeing how the ratio of

19:06

carbon isotopes changed over time, and

19:09

they noticed a blip just like this 56 million

19:12

years ago. You know, when it kind

19:14

of moves up and down, and this

19:16

kind of long-term changes, and then suddenly

19:18

there's this like massive decrease, and

19:21

it falls off the graph, and then it comes back

19:23

again almost immediately. That

19:25

blip showed that there was some serious climate change

19:28

56 million years ago. There could

19:30

have been all sorts of causes, but the

19:32

levels looked weirdly similar to the climate change

19:34

we're causing today. So Gavin

19:37

started to wonder about what was behind

19:39

this ancient blip. Well, wouldn't it

19:41

be funny if the cause

19:43

was the same too? What

19:45

if this blip was evidence of some

19:47

ancient, technological civilization that caused their own

19:50

climate change 56 million

19:52

years ago? So

19:55

Gavin posed the idea to Adam. It's

19:57

just like a freaky-deaky question, right? Sometimes

20:00

there's nothing better than thinking about

20:02

a freaky-dicky question. And they started

20:04

looking for other blips in the

20:06

geologic record that looked suspiciously like

20:09

the Anthropocene, starting with Gavin's 56

20:11

million-year-old blip. And you can go

20:13

back further. There's something around 120 million years ago. There

20:15

was something that's similar in the Jurassic. It's getting

20:18

a little bit harder to see what's going on.

20:20

You can go back to the

20:23

Permium Triassic extinction event, and

20:25

that's going back 250 million years. And

20:29

do we know if these are just blips? Is

20:32

there anything else in these layers that might be

20:34

a sign that you're looking at some

20:36

kind of ancient, advanced technological species? Well,

20:38

as far as we know, we haven't discovered

20:41

any unnatural chemicals in any

20:43

of these deposits. We haven't discovered any plastics

20:45

layers in any of these deposits. We

20:48

haven't discovered any nuclear fallout in

20:50

these deposits. So we haven't detected any of those things.

20:53

But we can imagine a civilization that didn't

20:55

make a lot of plastic or nuke

20:57

itself, right? Well, yes, why

20:59

not? You see the

21:01

things that we've done, and you say,

21:03

well, that's just because of the way

21:05

we organize our society, because of the

21:07

way we develop technology. But why

21:10

would you imagine that that was some

21:12

kind of universal truth? It's obviously not,

21:14

right? So then you go back, and

21:16

you kind of think, well, what are

21:18

the essentials? Yeah, if it's not plastic

21:20

or nuclear weapons or something, what

21:23

would be common to all

21:25

advanced civilizations? Well, we

21:27

went back and forth on this quite a lot. But

21:30

the essentials are basically energy, and

21:32

energy perhaps derived from fossil fuels,

21:34

and then that gives you this

21:36

carbon isotope marker. That's the

21:38

blimp you saw in the geologic record 56

21:41

million years ago. Right. So

21:43

then you say, okay, well, that's perhaps necessary,

21:45

but that's not sufficient. We're not

21:47

going to be convinced that that means that there was

21:50

another civilization. We're going to need more. And

21:52

I assume we don't have more? Well,

21:54

but there's lots of things they haven't found because they

21:56

haven't looked. Right? Okay.

22:00

People looking for

22:02

exotic. Isotopes

22:04

of plutonium in Dc sentiments

22:06

is quite small. The number

22:08

of people looking for a

22:10

man made chemicals in i

22:12

hundred million year old sediments.

22:15

Is. Also, high school, but people have

22:17

to look before we can dismiss it

22:19

completely. And. If you're only looking for

22:21

like waste is about him. Over, there was

22:24

some advanced civilization back there that we can't

22:26

see. If it's just used renewable energy or

22:28

something, right? So he civilizations the com sustainable

22:31

then you may not be. I wasn't set

22:33

them at home, has. I

22:35

so we we have this some. Kind

22:38

of paradox that. You.

22:40

Know it's possible that we will

22:42

never be able to find the

22:44

long lived civilizations because. That.

22:47

Long lived in sustainable arm and we

22:49

can only find the things that burn

22:51

themselves to a crisp. and and the

22:53

civilization got a burn themselves to a

22:56

crisp would probably also be harder to

22:58

find record. They would have to last

23:00

a significant only lanes for Arizona. That's

23:02

then. It's like the universe is conspiring

23:04

against us to try and find other

23:07

civilizations right. Like the episode one has

23:09

any longer ones. Hard to find friends,

23:11

but. It. Seems unlikely. That mean

23:13

our other staff you I'd like to

23:16

do you think there wasn't? It's advanced

23:18

civilization before humans. Are. There

23:20

is no evidence. So. You

23:22

know some people find evidence that he though

23:24

these I instincts, but you know that to

23:26

divert the paper that we wrote in the

23:28

discussion that started since then is really a

23:31

question of how do you know. There.

23:36

Might not be conclusive evidence of

23:38

a summary, and like civilization, but

23:40

that doesn't mean the question isn't

23:42

still worth asking. Scientists.

23:44

Do this kind of thing all the time. Just.

23:46

Think about the search for civilizations

23:48

on other planets for a long

23:51

time. You know Nasa wind fund.

23:53

Anything to do with a search

23:55

for biosignatures of alien? Nice? You

23:57

know that was also seen as

23:59

someone. Good that

24:01

the has gone, as we've

24:04

discovered thousands of exoplanets around

24:06

many, many, many different kinds

24:08

of stars. and so the

24:10

science and has broadened. Distillery

24:13

and hypothesis could also eventually lead

24:15

to all sorts of unexpected discoveries.

24:17

Had at least for now davin

24:19

fifty six million euro blip is

24:21

just a blip. Not a clear

24:23

sign of an ancient civilization, probably

24:25

just some natural changes in the

24:27

past. I mean I you know

24:29

why glass of by the some

24:31

non not salary convince people that

24:33

there were you know, ancient civilizations.

24:35

But just to think about. What

24:38

would have been less? that spot

24:40

can provide a powerful shift in

24:43

perspective. A lot of people don't

24:45

realize how much over see a

24:47

logical force we all, but then

24:50

you point out that. The

24:52

snow, for what we're doing, is

24:54

as large as anything that happened

24:56

over the last sixty five million

24:58

is. Then it's like, oh, maybe

25:00

that's a big deal than see

25:03

you. Maybe maybe maybe one degree

25:05

temperature? Thirty one Boy? Five? Maybe

25:07

two degrees. Maybe that's a big

25:09

deal Back kind of reaction is

25:11

exactly what Gavin is going for.

25:13

The. Sort of telescoping moment. That

25:17

Adam had when he first heard

25:19

the question your Everything and sciences

25:21

about the right question Because the

25:23

right question that has not been

25:25

asked before can pry open all

25:27

kinds of things like yes, I

25:29

do not think that there was

25:31

a previous civilizations, but the question

25:33

of how would you know if

25:35

there was certainly opens the doors

25:37

to how to civilizations and planets

25:39

evolve together. In

25:41

this sense, the salary and hypothesis raises

25:43

a bigger question. What?

25:45

Our society, Do we want to be? do

25:48

we want to be easier to find are

25:50

harder to find in millions of years we

25:52

can then very brightly sir sold by the

25:54

time but we can sustain the and so

25:56

we have to transition if we want to

25:58

be along this species So

26:01

the question is whether that's possible. When

26:05

we take this extremely zoomed

26:07

out perspective, history is almost

26:09

impossibly long. We

26:11

may not even be the first civilization that's

26:14

asked whether we were the first civilization.

26:17

And when we think about when the universe is likely

26:19

going to end, we're not even

26:21

halfway there. There's more

26:23

than enough room for our civilization to

26:25

disappear and for tons of future ones

26:27

to come around, not knowing we were

26:30

ever even here. That's

26:32

the thought that I take away most from the

26:34

Silurian hypothesis. We are not

26:36

forever. And if we don't

26:38

make a concerted effort to stick around everything

26:41

we've ever done, everything we know,

26:43

it all might

26:46

end up as some future

26:48

scientist's freaky, deaky destiny. This

26:59

episode was reported and produced by me,

27:01

Noam Hasenfeld, edits from Catherine Wells with

27:03

help from Brian Resnick and Meredith Hodnott,

27:05

mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala

27:07

and a theme Shapiro, music

27:09

from me, fact checking from Richard Sima

27:12

and Mandy Nguyen, staring at the sun.

27:15

Bird Pinkerton blinked as her eyes adjusted

27:17

to the darkness. Two platypuses

27:20

stood over her arguing. If

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