The dinosaurs that once dominated the earth for more than 100 million years have long disappeared in the vast historical river of the earth. Even the sun and the earth, which nurture and nourish all things, will always die one day. Even the universe could die out and start over. There is a beginning and an end, and everything seems to be unable to escape the fate of extinction.
Counting the early ancestors of humans, humans have existed on Earth for millions of years. The earliest ancient civilization in human history was the Sumerian civilization, which appeared in Mesopotamia (two river basins) around 3500 BC. The Sumerians also invented the world's earliest script, cuneiform, around 3200 BC. In this way, the written history of human history is about 5,000 years. If you can calculate it, the more glorious moments in human civilization are only less than 10,000 years.
Human beings have stood on the top of the earth with wisdom, so how many years can human civilization continue? I'm afraid no one can say this.
According to the fossil evidence now found, humans should be the first high-IQ creature born in the history of life on Earth, and human civilization is also the first civilization on Earth.
Many people believe that there is a good possibility that there is an intelligent civilization like human civilization in this vast universe. It's just that we haven't come out of the novice village yet, and we are still crawling slowly in the solar system, so we can neither find aliens nor be discovered by aliens.
In the near future, if human beings suddenly disappear, after 1 billion years of long time, if aliens visit the earth, will they still be able to find that there was such a brilliant civilization as human beings on the earth?
In fact, even if human civilization suddenly disappears, in another 1 billion years, there will still be traces of human existence on the earth, and they can prove that we have appeared on the earth and have a brilliant civilization.
1, fossils
The reason why humans can know that there were such huge animals as dinosaurs on the earth is because we have excavated dinosaur fossils from the ground.
Fossils are the best medium for conveying information across tens of millions of years. When the remains and remains of animals and plants (such as footprints) are buried by sediments, after a long period of time, they are invaded by minerals in a relatively closed environment, and hard fossils can be formed, such as animal skeleton fossils, amber, etc.
Through fossils, we can understand the evolution of life on Earth; through fossils, we not only understand how modern humans were born, but also use them to glimpse the appearance and characteristics of ancient human ancestors. In short, through fossils, it can at least prove that human life once existed on earth.
Even if ancient humans have disappeared for a long time, they can still leave some fossils on the earth. Then in the future, even if human beings suddenly become extinct, they will still be able to retain a small number of fossils on the earth.
2, buildings and other human relics and relics
Fossils can only prove that we have existed, not that we have been brilliant.
If you want future generations to know the greatness of their predecessors, it is indeed a good way to record them with words. As for how to preserve, Liu Cixin said in "The Three-Body Problem": "The oldest way of carving words on stone is the way to retain information for the longest time."
Indeed, if the information is saved on a disk or in a book, it will not be long before the material that holds the information will decay or be damaged, but the stone stele will be preserved for a longer time.
Words are indeed an important tool for conveying information, but they also have limitations. Now we are faced with foreign languages, if we have not studied, we cannot understand or understand them at all. Ancient scripts from thousands of years ago, such as oracle bones and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, are even more difficult to understand. Over time, it is likely that future generations will lose the ability to recognize this ancient symbol.
In fact, compared with words, various relics of human beings may be better able to convey information to the future across distant time and space. Don't archaeologists also understand the ancient situation through the remains of ancient buildings and the relics in ancient tombs? Moreover, some of the written history is not true.
For intelligent civilizations, it is inevitable to be able to invent and create many things that do not exist in nature. Although human civilization has only been brilliant for thousands of years, it has caused great changes to the face of the earth, and the most conspicuous and magnificent of them are buildings. Although a small number of animals in nature are also architects, they are only drawn from nature and do not have the ability to deeply process building materials or build buildings as majestic and complex as the pyramids of ancient Egypt.
Whether it is a pyramid or the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, for a long time, the main building material of human beings was rock. Rock buildings can indeed withstand the wind and frost, replaced by wooden buildings, and have long disappeared.
However, rocks can also weather, especially rock-like buildings exposed to the surface. For modern human civilization, the easiest thing to preserve is probably not rock products, but buildings or objects made of high-strength metal materials such as wear resistance and corrosion resistance. Even if humans disappear, those things can be preserved for a very long time.
If aliens come to Earth, or if a new intelligent civilization is born on Earth, then their excavation of human relics such as ancient buildings can also prove that we have come and been brilliant.
3. Radio signals and probes drifting in space
If the Earth were to disappear, there would be another way for an alien civilization to detect the existence of human civilization. This method, which scientists are already using, is to probe for regular radio signals in the universe. This should be regarded as an invisible relic of human civilization in this world.
Because the physical laws between the universes are interconnected, no matter what kind of civilization, when the level of science and technology develops to a certain extent, it is bound to be able to use radio, which is bound to produce some very regular radio signals, which will spread to the depths of the universe.
Even if humans disappear, these signals will still travel through the universe. If a civilization detects such a signal, they may not know that there was once a planet called Earth in the universe, but at least they know that there is an intelligent civilization in the universe that knows how to use radio.
Isn't the reason why humans can understand the state of the early universe is because we can see stars billions of years ago?
In addition, humans have also launched several spaceships into the universe carrying information about human civilization, such as Voyager 1, which can also drift in the universe for a long time and may be discovered by alien civilizations.
So what catastrophe will make modern humans disappear?
Some may think it's a supervolcano, some think it's a nuclear weapon, or an asteroid impact, but none of this is likely to cause humanity to disappear completely, after all, humans now have the ability to travel to other planets in the solar system, such as the moon and Mars.
For humans who already have the ability to space, if the earth can no longer stay and is about to be destroyed, humans have absolutely the ability to retain a part of the fire and let them take root and sprout elsewhere in the solar system.
In other words, in order for humanity to disappear, it must be made so that human beings have no chance to escape.
From an objective point of view, it is more likely that human beings will be attacked by alien civilizations. Like what the sun suddenly goes out, this simply can't happen.
As Hawking said, adhering to the principle of not putting eggs in the same basket, going into space and developing interstellar civilization is the only secret to ensure the longevity of human civilization.
What do you think about this?
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