Long-Term Survival of Artifacts

[Golan2072]

Would any technological item survive over several tens of millions of years? Any building? any starship?

That is, how long does it take for TL12+ artifacts to erode to virtual non-existance in vaccum (with solar wind, solar/cosmic radiation and a moderate amount of micrometeorites)? In a standard atmosphere? In an Earthlike planet's soil?

I'm just thinking of adding VERY old artifacts to MTU...

 

[Spinward Scout]

It all depends what material the artifact is made of. If it's made of a material similar to the carbon buckyballs/buckytubes or diamond, it could exist for millions of years. Or if it's been preserved in some way: frozen, buried away from decaying substances. But eventually everything falls apart.

You could always have it made of Neutronium. Neutronium is a theoretical substance that exists at the center of a Neutron Star - made entirely of Neutrons. The Element of Atomic Number Zero. Should be indestructible unless placed at the center of a black hole. Also, since it wouldn't contain any Protons or Electrons, it would effectively have no radiation (can't have radiation if there are no Electrons to emit a Photon). But it could have Quantum Flux and be used to power a Zero-Point Energy machine (I've been working on a write-up to throw into the Research Station section).

Dameon

 

[Golan2072]

Aside for nanotech products such as buckytube constructs, I was thinking more about things such as TL12 to TL15 starships and buildings.

 

[robject]

A quote from Alien Module 8 (Darrians):

The number of TL15 warships expected by the Imperium to remain in service after 2,000 years is zero. The percentage of TL15 starships which could remain in service after 2,000 years, if the Imperium had a mind to keep and maintain them for longevity, is also zero.

Thus, survivability and endurance can be inferred to be two of the characteristics that Darrian TL16 starships have.

Having stated that, however, it's important to note that only a couple dozen TL16 ships remain (for various reasons including the Maghiz).

 

[Merxiless]

At a guess, on the earth's, or similar world, could be hundreds of thousands of years, to a few hundred million years. Also depends on what you mean by "eroding to non-existence."

All of these numbers are rough. I am no archaeologist.

But, I figured you are looking for a ballpark answer, more or less.

That being said;

The Milky way galaxy is estimated to be 12 to 13.5 or so billion year old.

The oldest known rock formations on Earth date to about 4 billion years ago, around the time that the intense meteor bombardment of the solar system abated.

The interiors of continents contain some of the oldest rocks known on the earth's surface. Portions of these areas are covered with veneers of flat-lying sedimentary rocks of younger age, when shallow seas covered lots of areas with rock like sandstone, layed down over time, as inland seas formed and retreated. In some areas, the older granite rocks now lie exposed, by erosion.

There are ancient cyanobacterial microfossils from ~3.5 Billion years old.

There are fossils of human-like ancestors about 3 to 4 million years old.

The oldest artifacts are tools made about 2.5 million years ago in Africa.

During the Great Ice Age (Pleistocene Epoch) which began about 2 million years ago, large portions of Canada and the Northern United States were blanketed by the continental ice sheet. At that time, the ocean surface was 450 feet lower.

The oldest fossils of modern man's Bone Tools used for mathematics and counting are nearly 150,000 years old.

In the case of the earth, mostly limited by erosion, glacial advance/retreat, plate tectonics cycles covering an area with ocean / open areas and the continental conveyor belt, perhaps a few hundred million years.

In an atmosphere, same thing, again limited by burial from oceans.

On a world with no atmosphere, and no plate tectonics, could be maybe a billion years? Sure, a technological item would be buried, by meteoric infall, perhaps by that time.

In space in a galaxy, could last for billions of years, subject to a chance collision with a space rock, planet or (more likely) captured by a star system. This could be way off, depending on what "Dark Matter" is. Or it could tangle with a supermassive Black hole at a glactic center. My data indicates that not all galaxies have one of these.

In intergalactic space, could be somewhere around a few billion years? The sun will last another 5 billion years or so, before it dies, taking most of the solar system with it.

Depends on the race that built it, where they evolved etc.

 

[parmasson]

For me in game terms for starships (always LBB2) I would erode the drives computer and etc one letter for every year they were exposed to oxygen and moisture (airlocks are open) on a roll of 8+. This includes animals taking root in the staterooms and plant growth.

In space roll once every century or so assuming the artifact is not in a Mercury orbit.

Most of the time I just do it for plot reasons. If it works for the story a single example of the object will survive sealed in some handwavium box.

 

[Whipsnade]

2-4601,

By 'artifact' do you mean 'working device'? Or are you using it archaeological sense?

There are many alloys that would last 10 millions years, alloys that cannot appear naturally, although just what is natural and what isn't can be a gray area. Look at the wholly natural fission piles found in West Africa for instance.

'Waste' products or refuse can last too. Plastics may have eroded into microscopic bits but their presence in a soil sample will point to an ancient landfill. The materials inside Yucca Mountain will be inert after 10 million years with the Yucca Mountain facility most like collapsed and 'smeared' about, but the relative abundance of the waste materials in the location, their isotopic ratios, and all the rest will be hallmarks of their once being artifacts at that location.

As the others have pointed and as you surmised, placing items in vacuum will help somewhat. Burying them on geologically 'dead' worlds will help even more. The Monolith in 2001 anyone? Mining and other industrial efforts on a body like Luna may be 'hidden' from casual observation by 10 million years of regolith 'dust' produced by impacts, but the traces of those efforts would be easily detected in much the same way we currently spot 4000 year old roads and cities from orbit. Without plate tectonics to 'rework' the body's surface, artifacts can last some time. Only the relatively rare astonomical impacts can erase them.

Certain very large terraforming efforts could be noticeable after 10 million years.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Merxiless]

My thoughts of the buried Monolith in 2001, exactly.

Clarke is a genius.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
2-4601,

By 'artifact' do you mean 'working device'? Or are you using it archaeological sense?

I'm mostly using it in the archeological sense of the word, but working devices could be useful adventure-wise.

You see, IMTU there were two previous "waves" of widespread interstellar civilization in known space before the current one; smaller civilization arose or fell on single worlds, but only these two "waves" of previous wide-ramnging civilization are know.

The first "wave" occured about 60 million years ago, and ended with a very destructive war. Very little is known of this wave save for the remnants of a destructive war (mostly nuclear, sometimes involving diverting asteroids). Once the Celirans will be contacted, some more information would be revealed about that "wave" as the Celirans are the results of evolution from Teropod stock transplanted by the sophonts of that "wave" from Earth to another world, possibly for safari and hunting purposes. The TL of that "wave" is unknown, and could be anywhere from 9 to 16.

The "second wave" were the Precursors; they existed about 750,000 years ago, were actually a group of four different races possibly banded togather under some alliance or a common government. Their common high TL was about TL14, peaking at TL15. Their artifacts should be findable all over space, but usually on dead and airless worlds (Luna-style), in stable orbits (Lagrange points maybe?) and occasionaally buried beneath the surface of worlds with atmospheres. They too probably had a violent cause of disappearance - but probably far less violent than the one that wiped out the first "wave". Once the Solar Triumvirate would contact the Inheritors (evolved from semi-sentient omnivores present on one of the more industrialized Precursor worlds, think rat-equivalents in the ecologicl term of the world, even though I don't know how exactly their biology will be), alot will be found about that "wave".

Hmmm... I'm starting to think about the Face/Piramids on Mars... Precursor large-scale art? A colony half-eroded by the winds? As Mars was the first world to be colonized by Humanity IMTU, by the time the game takes place it will probably be open to tourists.

 

[vutpakdi]

You might want to look up books by Jack McDevitt. Most of his books feature an archealogical mystery sort of setting/background where people find the remains and artifacts of previous civilizations.

In particular, the "Hutch" series of books starting with Engines of God and followed by Deepsix might prove inspiring. The universe of the "Hutch" series is a lonely place where humans have found a few worlds with sentients, but none with any significant technology. But, they have found scattered evidence of space faring aliens, usually long gone.

I think that in Chindi, the third book in the series, they do find a alien's home on an airless moon with some technological artifacts, but nothing works. The actual Chindi itself is pretty fascinating.

Ron

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

"-20,000: Ancient Warbots finally run down on Vland."

I picture a tremendously old building or complex around the ruins of these, if they still exist... the area could be the artifact.

There also should be more ghost ships/flying dutchmen about... weird alien craft and sapce objects.

 

[Chaos]

Your best bet for remains on more or less Earth-like worlds would be fossilization. Or, at least, any process in which *something* - life form or object - decays, leaving a cavity, which is then filled by some other material which turns into rock, resulting in a fossilized *something*. Of course, fossilization takes a lot of time, and it is a rare process.

 

[mike wightman]

How about encasing in tree sap/resin , to turn into amber - or some synthetic polymer equivalent?

 

[Golan2072]

Or sinking in natural (or unnatural) tar? I know that several prehistoric animals were quite well-preserved after that. Ofcourse, there was also that mammoth that froze in Siberia, and when russian scientists dug it out of the ice, bears came and ate it - it was so well preserved that it was steal edible (atleast by a bear).

 

[Whipsnade]

2-4601,

Remember, the fossils and other items from tar pits are not millions of years old. Your first post mentioned 10 million years.

As Sigg pointed out, amber is a good bet. There are insects preserved in amber from +60 million years ago.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

What about the possibility of the technological object not being preserved at all? The evidence it leaves behind is an unusually high grade mineral deposit of dissimilar elements.

For example, take a Scout/Courier and land it on a stable world like the moon (The Monolith premise) and then find it 50 to 100 million years from landing. The Scout/Courier will be gone, but a small hill will be left of high grade iron ore (assuming that the hull was crystaliron), some iron hydrates (assuming that the hydrogen left in the fuel tanks diffused out and combined with the air in the lifesystem and then combined with the hullmetal), odd tiny veins of copper that lead to nodes of silver and/or gold (from the control systems), an off-center chunk of depleted radioactives (assuming that the ship used a fission power plant), and an odd puddle of hydrocarbons at the base of the hill (what would be left of the plastics and organics from the ship). I cannot say that my assessment is accurate, but it would look strange enough to a belter who came across this to call in an expert like an archaeologist.

Of course, there is always the possibility that amoung the hydrocarbon goo at the base of the hill is a couple of remaining DNA strands. Ripe for the cloning, perhaps?

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
What about the possibility of the technological object not being preserved at all? The evidence it leaves behind is an unusually high grade mineral deposit of dissimilar elements.

Jeff,

Exactly. Hence my Yucca Mountain example.

What would a radioactive waste storage facility look like aft 10 million years? An odd deposit of dissimilar elements, right?


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
What about the possibility of the technological object not being preserved at all? The evidence it leaves behind is an unusually high grade mineral deposit of dissimilar elements.

Jeff,

Exactly. Hence my Yucca Mountain example.

What would a radioactive waste storage facility look like aft 10 million years? An odd deposit of dissimilar elements, right?


Have fun,
Bill </font>[/QUOTE]Yes. Exactly.

(I covered up missing the Yucca Mountain reference pretty good there. A-yup. )

Here's a thought problem I'm going to mull over tonight at work. What if the proverbial doomsday happened and wiped out all life on Earth tomorrow. What would the earth look like in 100 million years? In particular, would there be any remains of civilization?

 

[parmasson]

100 million?

Nothing really. Some bones, a foundation perhaps.

 

[Lochlaber]

The most likely places to survive would be various artificial caves, like Cheyenne Mountain. Built in tectonically stable areas like that, would be more likely to stick around for a few million years at least. On the surface itself, you could expect maybe fragments and of course our radioactive garbage would still be sticking around.