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a curious group of explorers stumble
upon a planet their sensors pick up an
interesting chemical profile large
amounts of water temperatures moderate
enough to keep most of it liquid an
atmosphere containing higher than
expected levels of oxygen the land is
oddly green it's an abnormal place worth
investigating this planet's name is
Earth these explorers will find an earth
teeming with life but in our story Homo
sapiens is not among them maybe we've
moved on maybe we've died out but this
planet is no longer ours the strange
plants and animals although our
explorers wouldn't call them that can
only tell how this planet is not how it
was but they have knowledge of geology
they understand the strata of rocky
planets and where they examine layers of
rock stacked one on top of another
they'll be able to piece together our
story consider what we know about the
dinosaurs they existed for more than a
hundred million years yet we've only
uncovered a few thousand complete
remains our species has been around for
just a fraction of that time but despite
this relatively short existence we've
left a huge mark and today scientists
are more certain than ever we've changed
the earth to such an extent that
geologists digging in the distant future
would classify this as a totally new
epoch the Anthropocene but when would it
begin and what would they find there the
rise of farming countless empires most
of human history Stein span in fact
would be almost invisible in the rock
but they noticed us during the
industrial revolution our species
numbered a billion for the first time
accelerating until around 1950 when
population growth and human consumption
explode
great acceleration this era of
unprecedented economic change and
consumption would be unmistakable in the
rocks our waste contains materials never
before seen on earth I want to say one
word to you just one word into plastics
every year we pump out a massive plastic
equal to the weight of all humans on
earth and not just plastics also glass
and bricks although they're made from
raw materials they're modified by heat
into forms that are both long-lasting
and notably organized consider aluminum
it was essentially unknown in its pure
elemental form before the 19th century
yet since 1950 we've produced enough for
every human alive to make a stack of
cans a kilometer high enough concrete
has been produced to pave all of Earth
and half of that since just 1995 all of
this stuff would mark the most new
minerals created since oxygen first
built up in our atmosphere 2.4 billion
years before you're watching this video
and beyond these raw materials would be
traces of the things that we've made
with them our techno fossils from planes
and phones to paper clips and lost
ballpoint pens countless confusing
traces of our time and should those
future explorers be versed in chemistry
they'd find metals and rare earth
elements spread worldwide and strangely
missing from the lower layers where we
dug them up a few like platinum rhodium
and palladium would be strangely
concentrated along strands of a strange
web ejected from the tailpipes of our
cars on our roads they'd see huge spikes
of nitrogen and phosphorous from
fertilizer production and were they to
find ice on this future earth ice cores
would show sudden spikes in methane and
carbon dioxide like nothing seen in the
800,000 years previous if they found
fossils they would see many species go
from local concentrations in older
layers to a sudden global spread these
are marks of our domestic animals and
plants and invasive species like we've
witnessed in our own time these future
explorers would see a spike in the
number of species that suddenly
disappear from the fossil record
a mass extinction event we've talked
about this at length in a previous video
and we just don't know how bad it will
get but as they decoded the dawn of the
Anthropocene there would be one mark
clearer than all the others tracing back
to a single day in Earth's history July
16 1945 the detonation of the first
atomic bomb
rare radioactive elements like plutonium
239 and all its decay products would
leave a chemical signature that our
future explorers could not help but
notice although they might not be able
to explain its origins it makes you
wonder what would they think of us what
picture of our species of our culture
would they connect from all of these
dots whoever it may be that one day
examines the Anthropocene the layer of
Earth that will represent us remember
that we control what it holds and how
much time it will represent stay curious
in case all you future explorers are
wondering this episode of it's okay to
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Squarespace build it beautiful the words
season was born on the farm since for a
long time surviving other trip around
the Sun meant knowing when to sow your
seeds in most our minds winter is when
its coldest summer is when its hottest
and spring and autumn happened in
between you probably figured that much
out before kindergarten but those aren't
the seasons on your calendar in most of
the northern hemisphere especially in
the US the coldest quarter of the year
begins several weeks before the official
start of winter