Earlier today, a new Cool Worlds video was posted to Youtube titled “The Odds of Life – THIS CHANGED MY MIND.” Its an interesting piece narrated by Professor David Kipping regarding whether life is common in the universe. You will see that Professor Kipping is excited to share his results as he walks you through various papers before concluding that simple life may be more common than he believed earlier, making the chance of an advanced civilization a little more likely.
As always, it’s a fun story to follow as it answers one questions and stirs up other questions. For example, as part of his talk he notes an earlier paper that hypothesized the existence of an earlier technological civilization here on Earth about 350 million years ago. The paper is titled The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be Possible to Detect an Industrial Civilization in the Geological Record.
Here is the abstract of this paper:
If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event.
Professor Kipping said he hoped to create another video to discuss this idea about earlier civilizations. In the meantime, you may want to take a look at the paper.
Our Awesome Universe 