Have you ever heard of the Silurian hypothesis? Seemingly far-fetched, this scientific theory suggests that the advanced industrial life we know today could have flourished and disappeared millions of years ago. And it's thanks to NASA researchers!
Are we the only advanced civilization to have walked the planet?
Gavin Schmidt, climatologist and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a NASA laboratory located in New York, and astrophysicist Adam Frank shared a bold theory with the general public in 2018. The two scientists asked themselves a very interesting question: if a civilization as advanced as ours, or even more so, had existed more than 55 million years ago, would we be able to find traces of it? From this question arises the Silurian hypothesis, as far-fetched as it is serious. After all, the Earth formed 4.567 billion years ago, and unless you are a supporter of the "end of the world" predicted by Stephen Hawking, it should still be around millions (billions?) of years from now. Who knows if in 100 million years, after current society has collapsed, traces of our passage will still be visible on Earth?
The Silurian Hypothesis Explained
It is based on this principle that Gavin Schmidt and Adam Frank developed the Silurian hypothesis, presented to the general public in the scientific journal The International Journal of Astrobiology. This name refers to the Silurian geological system, which extends from -443.4 to -419.2 million years BC. It's also a nod to the Silurians in the series Doctor Who, a fictional species of reptiles native to Earth who lived during prehistory, with whom the two scientists maintain a distance:
We are not suggesting, however, that intelligent reptiles actually existed during the Silurian period. Nor are we suggesting that experimental nuclear physics is likely to wake them from hibernation.
However, if an advanced civilization had lived during the Devonian (a geological period extending from approximately 419 to 359 million years BC) would traces have survived to the present day?
A theory that fuels fantasies
As Gavin Schmidt and Adam Frank explain in their article, there is a good chance that if this is the case, we would find no evidence of it several tens (or even hundreds) of millions of years later. The Earth's geological record is incomplete: according to marine conservation biologist Callum Michael Roberts, the oceanic crust is "recycled rapidly in the mantle, about ten times faster than the continents" and no area of the oceanic crust is older than 200 million years." The sediments deposited there cannot therefore be preserved ad vitam aeternam. As for human fossils, the oldest of them, Toumaï, is dated to about 7 million years ago. If a civilization existed 10 or 100 million years ago, the chances of finding fossilized bones or a lost city are slim. A theory that will appeal to fans of mysteries like that of the pyramids in Egypt!
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