Question:

How long would it take for our civilization to be completely erased from earths history?

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via natural disasters and plate tectonics? Is it possible to completely erase everything we have built? Like the cement, and things that are not naturally produced by the earth. could these things be hidden forever?

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  1. As quickly as you an say "Kahboom!!".  A meteor hitting the earth is considered a natural disaster.  If it were big enough, it could rip the planet apart.


  2. hmmmm this is a very good and interesting question. I have asked myself this question before. that led me to wonder, is it possable that there was aanother advanced civilization on earth millions of years ago, who destroyed themselves like we may on day?

    I know that right now, the United States is building a nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Many other countires are doing the same thing. It is designed specificaly to last "forever" or at least tens of thousands of years. They put it in an area that isn't geologicaly active so if we forget about and 10,000 years later rediscover it, people will have an idea they should stay away. (there are pictures that indicate extreme danger.) The ruins of large, well built strucures may last millions of years, and evedence of our nuclear waste repositories may even last 10's or hundreds of millions of years. This means all evedence of human civilization may be erased in a relativly small amount of time on a cosmic scale were it not for 3 things.

    1- The fossil record. we have fossil evedence of earths early organisims dating back 3 billion years. there are 6 billion humans alive today, and considering we have fossels from early humans when there were far less of us arround to make them, logic would dictate that there would be many more fossils made of us, our buildings and our tools.

    2- voyager 1 and 2, pioneer 1 and 2. all four are still traveling off out inot the distance of the cosmos. the voyagers were equiped with a gold phonograph with information on our makeup, history and culture. it is estimated those phonopraphs will last 2 billion years in the vacume of space

    3- alien civilizations. as i type, radio waves are being sent out from earth into the vestiges of space, alien civilizations may some day pick them up. And even if they dont, who know what sort of civilization-detecting technologies an alien race might have in 1, 10, or even 100 billion years, long after the earth is a burnt cynder orbiting a white dwarf.

    for sure though in 10 to the 86th power years, nothing will be detectable, because by then all mater, including hydrogen and iron will have radioactivly decayed.

  3. Easily, and it doesn't take long at all.

    I would say, 100,000 years to be certain.  Nothing man made will last that long.

    (Except for the possible fossil evidence. Then you are talking millions of years)

  4. Most things would be gone in a couple hundred thousand years. All but Sonic cups and Diapers. They'll be around in garbage fields forever.

  5. well if everybody dies and every building is destroyed then it would have to be after everything has been destroyed or killed.

  6. Some things may last in pieces.  Large dams and other really massive structures.

    Special preservation will preserve some things for a very long time.  For instance, small shells have lasted entombed in sediment for hundreds of millions of years.

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