What would happen if humans disappeared?

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7 years 6 months ago #258333 by
Thanks for your concern. I've come through it all with very few scars. I'm happy with the world, and at peace with everything. And I agree with you, that people can change.

"that even someone who came from bad circumstances can retain basic human goodness and strive to make the world better, even if it is only the part of the world within his or her own sphere of personal influence" That is true, but there are those, who have no desire to seek that goodness or make the world better.

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7 years 6 months ago #258365 by steamboat28

Sara Teasdale wrote: There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

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7 years 6 months ago #258372 by JamesSand
Hmm.


I have some thoughts on the OP, but first, with no introduction -

http://www.loony-archivist.com/babycakes/
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7 years 6 months ago #258388 by Cyan Sarden
Personally, I believe this could be turned into a general discussion about what happens when intelligent life develops on any planet. If life on Earth is any indication, there are a few observations that can be made:

- There's only one dominant intelligent species. There have been more here, but all of them were wiped out by the most versatile one

- With the development of society, resources become scarce after a relatively (ok, insanely) short amount of time. Making it necessary to look beyond the planet of origin for additional resources -> leading to the development of space traveling and refined resource exploitation technologies.

There are a few possible outcomes for this:

1. The species fails to develop the technology to continue resource exploitation on other planets once there are no more resources on Earth

2. If 1 is true, we either die out (if the planet has completely been stripped of all of its resources), or we partially die out because the remaining resources aren't enough to sustain the current civilisation size and then die out later, once the planet is destroyed by the collapse of its star.

3. We keep going on on other planets until we've run out of resources within the areas of space that we can reach within the limits imposed on us by physics. Then we die out.

So it's not really a question about if we die out, but rather: when. In my opinion, the planet (and / or entire sector) will be barren once humans are gone.

If we were to die out before we run out of all resources (e.g. wiped out by a cosmic event, by disease or by our own doing), the planet will keep going. There might be just enough time for another species to develop intelligence to the degree we have it today - which would re-start the cycle. There also might not - Earth is already a relatively old planet in terms of the development of life. Most other planets in the universe are considerably younger in this respect (which is now a theory for why we haven't been able to detect other intelligence - there simply hasn't been enough time for it to evolve on other planets yet).

And this might sound arrogant: will it matter if there's life on Earth if there are no intelligent, self-aware beings? Who will be able to reflect on it?

Do not look for happiness outside yourself. The awakened seek happiness inside.

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7 years 6 months ago #258390 by x57z12
Life would go on.

Honestly, I am always a bit astonished by people seeing us as ‘outside’ of the natural life. Maybe that would be fair if we had another planet, until then this is what we came from and what we are part of. It’s not like we could do without nature, accordingly I don’t see how we could not be part of it.

Another thing that I think is somewhere between amazing and ridiculous is the idea that we can actually destroy the planet. I seem to remember reading about some kind of lifeform living in the coolant of a nuclear reactor (I’d have to look that up though). I don’t think anything short of shattering the planet in a million pieces’ can extinguish the spark of life on this mudball. Human life, certainly. All life? I doubt that, we humans are surprisingly squishy compared to some things in nature.

That being said, I do seem to remember a rant of the devil on the beginning of Goethe’s Faust about trying to get rid of human life. Not a valid argument, but certainly fun to read.

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7 years 6 months ago #258395 by

Cyan Sarden wrote: In my opinion, the planet (and / or entire sector) will be barren once humans are gone.

I am not so sure of that, unless we upload our consciousness in a computer (Transcendence style) and turn the entire planet in a machine, life (even bacteria or fungi) will adapt to our absence and will go on starting a new evolutionary path.
Moreover, even if we "computerise" all the surface area of the planet and sterilise it natural events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and meteorite impact will occur. This events bring complex chemicals, heat and so on and can make the life cycle start again in the same way it started in the beginning. So I don't think the end of humankind will be the end of life in out system.

Cyan Sarden wrote: Earth is already a relatively old planet in terms of the development of life. Most other planets in the universe are considerably younger in this respect (which is now a theory for why we haven't been able to detect other intelligence - there simply hasn't been enough time for it to evolve on other planets yet).

Slooow down Cyan ahahah
The theory your are quoting exists (is by Dimitar Sasselov if I remember correctly) but is just an hypothesis with very little support to it. We have discovered around 2100 exoplanets (number of exoplanet confirmed in 2015, but there are other 700 candidates). Around 350 of them are Earth-like planets or supearths. I'll do not take into account exomoons.
Of these 350 exoplanets we have calculated the age of less than 10 and every result is around 3.5 Gyr or so. The Earth, in comparison, is 4.5 Gyr old (1 Gyr = 1 billion years).
If every one of these planet have earth-like life on it probably there is just some multicellular organism and nothing more and your theory would be true. We have to notice, by the way, that we have the age of less than 10 planets and looking at the results I suppose is really unlikely not to find a planet (or many) older than the Earth. Anyway, no one know at the moment, we can be the oldest or the youngest planet, we don't have enough data to establish that.

Cyan Sarden wrote: And this might sound arrogant: will it matter if there's life on Earth if there are no intelligent, self-aware beings? Who will be able to reflect on it?

Not arrogant, maybe just playing the devil's advocate and it's a good thing.
We weren't intelligent life forms. We were monkeys. And before being monkey we were unicellular organism. So yes, I think it really matters because some other life form can evolve, become self-aware and reflect on these things.
If what you say is true then 4'499'800'000 years of 4'500'000'000 would have no sense; but is because of that gigantic number of years that we are here today, so I think they matter.

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