Re:Was there a civilization on Earth before humans?
by danmaz74 on Saturday April 14, 2018 @01:53PM
(#16838481)
But I suppose that the weird isotope distribution caused by nuclear reactors affects areas so small, that they would be incredibly unlikely to be detected?
Re:Was there a civilization on Earth before humans?
by ajross on Saturday April 14, 2018 @02:02PM
(#16838530)
It's not like you can smell it, but these things exist (from natural fission chain reactions, not progenitor civilizations!) and have been discovered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
Nuclear reactors are recognizable for their crazy isotope distributions for billions of years. Geosynchronous sattelites might be stable for that long, too. The anthropocene mass extinction is likely to show up in the fossil record, and the rapid climate change based on burning carbon out of the ground (which doesn't match the isotope mix of atmospheric carbon) will likewise be detectable from sediment.