At the SETI conference last week I was surprised to hear NASA’s Chris McKay suggest we look for dinosaur relics on the moon. Dinos went suddenly extinct about 65M years ago, and the dino fossil record seems spotty enough that we could have missed a lineage that went from possum to human sized brains in the ~10M year period it took mammals. We could also have missed relics of a stone-tool phase that lasted only .2M years. But a dino lander left on the moon should stay visible a very long time.
I don't think mineral geology is as arbitrary and easily fooled as you think. For example, if dinos were responsible for current deposits, wouldn't they all be of vastly higher purity? And where are the aluminum deposits, why do we have to refine it from bauxite? Consider current dumps - aren't they bizarrely anomalously high purity sources of gold, copper, iron, alloys like steel, all mingled together in a fashion impossible to explain by existing mineralogy? For that matter, think about the locations of hypothetical dino civilization remains - just like us, they needed water, and just like us, water-based transportation would be the cheapest, so we'd see huge correlations of anomalous mineral deposits with past rivers/lakes/oceans. Which we don't.
Finally, here's a killer argument: where is the nuclear isotope signature? We have a good idea of what the natural world should look like in terms of radioactive elements and isotope ratios, based on first-principles from stars, which should be unaffected by any dino activity. Humanity has dumped all sorts of impossible elements and isotopes into the atmosphere and earth from its nuclear tests, power plants, medical nuclear tech, experiments, etc, which should be visible indefinitely (a bit like mass extinctions in the fossil record, hm...).
This objection makes about as much sense as the resolution to the Fermi Paradox that 'maybe all the aliens are all around us and the stars are just what their mega-engineering projects *look like to us*!' Except the stars are a massive waste of energy which serve no purpose, and the observed universe is precisely predicted by astrophysics models which include no equations for 'and then intelligent aliens colonized the universe and decided to rearrange the stars in exactly this manner'...
actually they were shown in the first apollo mission 11. if you check apollo 11's little west crater you will find 3 reptile sculptures of a snake center of the mound the T-rex and a raptor type. you can easily find this image through google earth and it allows you to magnify the image.
LOOK AT THE NASA WEBSITE FOR THE APOLLO 17 MISSION GALLERY ARCHIVE PHOTO (as17-134-20384.jpg) A HI-RES IMAGE OF THE "SALUTING" ASTRONAUT IS WHAT YOU GET....MAGNIFY THE VISOR ONLY...DO A SIMPLE ADJUSTMENT TO CONTRAST AND BRIGHTNESS, AND THERE YOU ALL GO!!!!!! I HOPE I'M NOT "BUMPED OFF" FOR THIS INFO! SEE YA!!!
Perhaps, being as technologically advanced as these Stephen-Hawkingosaurs apparently were, they forsaw their impending doom by asteroid/comet and all went into hybernation, where they remain?
While were speculating: Intelligent dinosaurs were much more intelligent than us, invented Bayesian bio-optical logic computers exhibiting even greater super intelligence using plant fibres, ants, and twigs. Were able to predict their future demise and being control freaks decided to commit mass suicide instead. Thus leaving no trace of their civilization before they ever hit the stage of mining.
Seems about a likely, given the evidence, as finding dino prints on the moon.
It is interesting that the fossil record of the late Cretaceous shows a decline in species numbers, for quite a time before the K/T boundary. Dinosaur eggs have been found to be thinning during this period, probably due to environmental disturbance. Throughout the period before the K/T boundary there is strong climate change evidence, for both heating and cooling.
So we have a period, long before any asteroid impact, where species are being lost and climate change is increasing, over short time scales.
(ring any bells???)
Of course it's also a possibility that these changes were entirely natural. But the alternative scenario of an intelligent species making a mess of a planet is also possible...
Other intelligent life form in the geological past? It may be, but where are the fossils? Perhaps we can think the fishes, or the insects. But a lot of species is nearly the same, than about 100 million or more years ago. For example: the sharks or the crocodiles. They could have evoluted some intelligent form. So where are the fossils? I know our world hasn't discovered corretly yet. We have to open theese doors, because our Universe is huge.
It is only human arrogance that assumes life as it is now works the same way as it did so long ago. Perhaps they left for reasons that would not be obvious to human thought. Perhaps they will return some day. Perhaps they already have, and are watching you right now.
Has anyone asked the Flying Spaghetti Monster about this? She'd likely be able to tell us all the details.
One might also ask about the Devonian aquatic species that migrated to the Alpha Centauri system. After all, there's equally as much evidence for that hypothesis as there is for dinosaurs on the moon.
We've transplanted a lot of species, but they haven't had time to reach equilibrium. I imagine that if we went extinct, they would change a lot before reaching equilibrium and it wouldn't be obvious that they'd migrated, rather than evolving from local species. It certainly would look like something dramatic happened, though. Maybe enough information would be left to figure out what happened, but it might look like a typical die-off.
Also, it's not obvious to me that the transplanted species wouldn't simply die off and never touch the fossil record. It makes sense that islands are vulnerable to rabbits, but it doesn't make sense that kudzu is well-adapted to North America. Perhaps it's really adapted to suburbs, and if humans died off, it would too. This would make humans even more like a normal die-off.
It would be very big and bad news
Yes, but don't over-do it. If a 100M year asteroid appeared in a 100ky interval, it would be a 1/1000 coincidence. Anthropic reasoning or the possibility that all asteroid strikes are artificial could push that number either way.
Instead of only looking for fossils we should also check if any dinosaurs cryonically froze themselves or uploaded their brains. We should be careful about unleashing them, though, given that they are predators.
Hal, I'm not sure I get your point. Is it that fossils are so rare that if humanity's dispersion of species is ended after a few centuries, then no one is likely to find the fossil evidence?
For all we know, our geological sciences are all skewed. I rather doubt it, though - if the metals had been previously mined, I don't think they would be present as ores, even after sixty million years. Our debris would rust and disperse itself into the groundwater and oceans far earlier than that if we suddenly vanished.
It's somewhat plausible to my mind that we might not notice a lack of a resource as much as we would notice finding a dino-mobile junkyard in the ground. If there had once been ten times the ore and oil in the ground as there was for humans to find, would we notice that our deposits were only one-tenth the amount that 'should' be there, or would we think that that must be how much oil forms over a few hundred million / billion years?
I don't think mineral geology is as arbitrary and easily fooled as you think. For example, if dinos were responsible for current deposits, wouldn't they all be of vastly higher purity? And where are the aluminum deposits, why do we have to refine it from bauxite? Consider current dumps - aren't they bizarrely anomalously high purity sources of gold, copper, iron, alloys like steel, all mingled together in a fashion impossible to explain by existing mineralogy? For that matter, think about the locations of hypothetical dino civilization remains - just like us, they needed water, and just like us, water-based transportation would be the cheapest, so we'd see huge correlations of anomalous mineral deposits with past rivers/lakes/oceans. Which we don't.
Finally, here's a killer argument: where is the nuclear isotope signature? We have a good idea of what the natural world should look like in terms of radioactive elements and isotope ratios, based on first-principles from stars, which should be unaffected by any dino activity. Humanity has dumped all sorts of impossible elements and isotopes into the atmosphere and earth from its nuclear tests, power plants, medical nuclear tech, experiments, etc, which should be visible indefinitely (a bit like mass extinctions in the fossil record, hm...).
This objection makes about as much sense as the resolution to the Fermi Paradox that 'maybe all the aliens are all around us and the stars are just what their mega-engineering projects *look like to us*!' Except the stars are a massive waste of energy which serve no purpose, and the observed universe is precisely predicted by astrophysics models which include no equations for 'and then intelligent aliens colonized the universe and decided to rearrange the stars in exactly this manner'...
In 2001 the concept of dinosaur parts on the moon was proposed by maj. Doug Shull - http://tech.groups.yahoo.co...
actually they were shown in the first apollo mission 11. if you check apollo 11's little west crater you will find 3 reptile sculptures of a snake center of the mound the T-rex and a raptor type. you can easily find this image through google earth and it allows you to magnify the image.
LOOK AT THE NASA WEBSITE FOR THE APOLLO 17 MISSION GALLERY ARCHIVE PHOTO (as17-134-20384.jpg) A HI-RES IMAGE OF THE "SALUTING" ASTRONAUT IS WHAT YOU GET....MAGNIFY THE VISOR ONLY...DO A SIMPLE ADJUSTMENT TO CONTRAST AND BRIGHTNESS, AND THERE YOU ALL GO!!!!!! I HOPE I'M NOT "BUMPED OFF" FOR THIS INFO! SEE YA!!!
Perhaps, being as technologically advanced as these Stephen-Hawkingosaurs apparently were, they forsaw their impending doom by asteroid/comet and all went into hybernation, where they remain?
While were speculating: Intelligent dinosaurs were much more intelligent than us, invented Bayesian bio-optical logic computers exhibiting even greater super intelligence using plant fibres, ants, and twigs. Were able to predict their future demise and being control freaks decided to commit mass suicide instead. Thus leaving no trace of their civilization before they ever hit the stage of mining.
Seems about a likely, given the evidence, as finding dino prints on the moon.
It is interesting that the fossil record of the late Cretaceous shows a decline in species numbers, for quite a time before the K/T boundary. Dinosaur eggs have been found to be thinning during this period, probably due to environmental disturbance. Throughout the period before the K/T boundary there is strong climate change evidence, for both heating and cooling.
So we have a period, long before any asteroid impact, where species are being lost and climate change is increasing, over short time scales.
(ring any bells???)
Of course it's also a possibility that these changes were entirely natural. But the alternative scenario of an intelligent species making a mess of a planet is also possible...
Other intelligent life form in the geological past? It may be, but where are the fossils? Perhaps we can think the fishes, or the insects. But a lot of species is nearly the same, than about 100 million or more years ago. For example: the sharks or the crocodiles. They could have evoluted some intelligent form. So where are the fossils? I know our world hasn't discovered corretly yet. We have to open theese doors, because our Universe is huge.
It is only human arrogance that assumes life as it is now works the same way as it did so long ago. Perhaps they left for reasons that would not be obvious to human thought. Perhaps they will return some day. Perhaps they already have, and are watching you right now.
Has anyone asked the Flying Spaghetti Monster about this? She'd likely be able to tell us all the details.
One might also ask about the Devonian aquatic species that migrated to the Alpha Centauri system. After all, there's equally as much evidence for that hypothesis as there is for dinosaurs on the moon.
I don't buy NL's theory. (the mobile part)
We've transplanted a lot of species, but they haven't had time to reach equilibrium. I imagine that if we went extinct, they would change a lot before reaching equilibrium and it wouldn't be obvious that they'd migrated, rather than evolving from local species. It certainly would look like something dramatic happened, though. Maybe enough information would be left to figure out what happened, but it might look like a typical die-off.
Also, it's not obvious to me that the transplanted species wouldn't simply die off and never touch the fossil record. It makes sense that islands are vulnerable to rabbits, but it doesn't make sense that kudzu is well-adapted to North America. Perhaps it's really adapted to suburbs, and if humans died off, it would too. This would make humans even more like a normal die-off.
It would be very big and bad news
Yes, but don't over-do it. If a 100M year asteroid appeared in a 100ky interval, it would be a 1/1000 coincidence. Anthropic reasoning or the possibility that all asteroid strikes are artificial could push that number either way.
Instead of only looking for fossils we should also check if any dinosaurs cryonically froze themselves or uploaded their brains. We should be careful about unleashing them, though, given that they are predators.
Nancy, I meant that if global warming kills off all life on earth, then there will be no fossils to find.
Hal, I'm not sure I get your point. Is it that fossils are so rare that if humanity's dispersion of species is ended after a few centuries, then no one is likely to find the fossil evidence?
What the dinosaurs may have looked like: http://www.easyscreens.info...
For all we know, our geological sciences are all skewed. I rather doubt it, though - if the metals had been previously mined, I don't think they would be present as ores, even after sixty million years. Our debris would rust and disperse itself into the groundwater and oceans far earlier than that if we suddenly vanished.
It's somewhat plausible to my mind that we might not notice a lack of a resource as much as we would notice finding a dino-mobile junkyard in the ground. If there had once been ten times the ore and oil in the ground as there was for humans to find, would we notice that our deposits were only one-tenth the amount that 'should' be there, or would we think that that must be how much oil forms over a few hundred million / billion years?
And since it must be said: Dino Singularity.