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Old 04-27-2018, 01:51 PM   #31
Bengt
 
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Default Re: Pre-human civilizations on Earth

How would the rebar fare if the concrete stayed intact?
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Old 04-27-2018, 02:12 PM   #32
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How would the rebar fare if the concrete stayed intact?
Probably poorly (and its corrosion would likely not be good for the concrete either).
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Old 04-27-2018, 10:18 PM   #33
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Marble, I would think. There are also naturally occurring materials that mimic concrete, with varying degrees of efficiency.
Concrete is a conglomerate (it's got sand and little stones in it). Some cements are calcium carbonate, so marble would be plausible for those, but funny looking marble with all those inclusions. Most cements are calcium silicates and aluminates though, so probably feldspar for those.

Clearly the planet had some really *weird* depositional environments back when concrete formed as a sedimentary rock. Probably whatever produced all the volcanic ash that went into these deposits also contributed to the co-occurring Q-N mass extinction.
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Old 04-27-2018, 11:03 PM   #34
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I remember reading that one of the most obvious long term things we would leave is old oil wells. Holes through millions of years of strata that are filled with concrete when played out. Leaves a odd looking trace.
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Old 04-29-2018, 02:28 AM   #35
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I remember reading that one of the most obvious long term things we would leave is old oil wells. Holes through millions of years of strata that are filled with concrete when played out. Leaves a odd looking trace.
Only if the civilization got to the tech level where oil was needed. Also, metamorphic processes could result in wavy marble-like inclusions, instead of nice straight ones. Oh, and trees can generate inclusions - shorter ones - similar to what a well might.

If the civilization only got to, say, Roman Republic tech, we still get some odd deposit patterns... but not the clear vertical quarter-mile intrusions... because the Republic was capable of rather impressive tunneling. Multiple-mile tunnels for the aqueduct system.
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Old 04-29-2018, 11:07 PM   #36
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I remember reading that one of the most obvious long term things we would leave is old oil wells. Holes through millions of years of strata that are filled with concrete when played out. Leaves a odd looking trace.
Large masses of relatively chemically stable metal might endure for some time. For ex, if somebody had a vault full of gold bars, it might take quite a long time before that looked 'natural'.

Large masses of silicate glass can last a long time, too, at least as far as chemical alteration goes.
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Old 04-29-2018, 11:09 PM   #37
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Concrete is a conglomerate (it's got sand and little stones in it). Some cements are calcium carbonate, so marble would be plausible for those, but funny looking marble with all those inclusions. Most cements are calcium silicates and aluminates though, so probably feldspar for those.

Clearly the planet had some really *weird* depositional environments back when concrete formed as a sedimentary rock. Probably whatever produced all the volcanic ash that went into these deposits also contributed to the co-occurring Q-N mass extinction.
This is something I've thought about. Occam's Razor would cut badly in this case, if we did find remnants of a long-ago high society, it might take quite some time before we were prepared to accept that it was what it was, esp. if we only had a few pieces.
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Old 04-30-2018, 03:45 AM   #38
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This is something I've thought about. Occam's Razor would cut badly in this case, if we did find remnants of a long-ago high society, it might take quite some time before we were prepared to accept that it was what it was, esp. if we only had a few pieces.
There are already plenty of people who think there were societies of various kinds existing before the ones that we currently know about - some of them, historically speaking, have proven to be right, others transparently barking. So yeah, getting all those "out of place artifacts" accepted as evidence rather than hoaxes and fringe/conspiracy theories is not a given.
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