Nokia 3310
It’d still be charged
That, and my old gameboy
There’s an entire book dedicated to answering your question: The World Without Us.
The Wikipedia article I linked summarizes a lot of the book, but I recommend reading it since the details are fascinating.
TL;DR:
The longest-lasting evidence on Earth of a human presence would be radioactive materials, ceramics, bronze statues, and Mount Rushmore. In space, the Pioneer plaques, the Voyager Golden Record, and radio waves would outlast the Earth itself.
Won’t there also be evidence of raw materials that got mined out?
Probably. Metals etc. are far out of “equilibrium distribution”, even if all mines collapse without a trace.
Almost certainly, depending on the time scale. Physical constructs will eventually break down, but the impact on the environment in total will likely be able to be deduced for millions of years.
For example, we already have a good record of the five previous mass extinction events, and can tie them directly to geological causes. On our current trajectory, a sixth wouldn’t necessarily tie well to any other factors other than the activity of a dominant species. This is one of many factors in the proposed geological epoch of the anthropocene.
The stuff humans have left on the Moon and Mars would probably be good indicators.
There will be strangely distributed concentrations of various materials in any sediment layer from our period, such as iron, copper, aluminum, hydrocarbons, and various minerals. A lot of these will be in relatively small areas and also laid out in clearly artificial geometric patterns, especially in straight lines.
That layer will also include, worldwide, levels of radioisotopes that do not occur naturally. The same way that there is an Iridium layer on the soils of 65MYA showing the asteroids that killed the dinosaurs, the current sediments being laid down have traces of plutonium and other materials that will exist until the sun becomes a red giant and swallow the Earth.
The nuclear waste will be radioactive for thousands of years, it will probably be radioactive longer than our current recorded history as a whole. Think about that, ever since humans started recording our history, our nuclear waste will be radioactive longer than that.
Ironically, our best bet is probably our space junk. Leave as much of our stuff in space and on the moon as possible.
Depends entirely on how long until the “next intelligent species to arise” (no reason to expect it ever will)
I watched a special years ago about what would happen to our infrastructure, buildings, etc if humans just blinked out of existence. The show start off advancing time, touching on events as they might occur. The very last thing to withstand the test of time was Mount Rushmore, due to be carved from granite. Mount Rushmore would stick around for a very very very long time and would be the last trace of us. But that’s just that one TV show special’s opinion, but it sounds pretty…solid to me.
but it sounds pretty…solid to me.
I see what you did there. I, for one, think it’s a rock solid pun that most will take for granite.
Micro plastics in the earth.
There would be signs, but I don’t think there is any guarantee that a new intelligent life form would care to look for such signs, or that they’d have the type of intelligence that would be able to interpret the signs of our existence and conclude that we had existed in their distant past.
At best, our existence would be one of several theories explaining abnormalities about the Earth that future intellectuals would argue about.
A layer of space trash floating around the planet
Just a wee microscopic layer of plastic in the geological sediment.
I have really appreciated your thoughts on this question. There are many different ways that we can think about this, and I appreciate every one of the ways that you have all espoused. Bravo! Thanks for answering my rather generic question.
Yeah maybe a few liars.
