Google Maps Updated With Skyfall Island Japan Terrain 107
MojoKid writes "The latest in the Bond film series, Skyfall, was certainly one to remember. And not all of those memories were pleasant. The head villain's island lair was a particularly spooky place. The decaying wasteland depicted in the film was a shadow of Hashima off the coast of Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan. Due to its unique flat shape, the island is most widely known in Japan by its nickname Gunkanjima — aka 'Battleship Island.' In some circles, it's called 'Dead Island.' Google actually sent an employee to the island with a Street View backpack in order to capture its condition and a panoramic view for all to see in 360 degrees. You can take a virtual walk across the island now, and Google also used its Business Photos technology to let you peek into the abandoned buildings, complete with ancient black-and-white TVs and discarded soda bottles."
Re:A puzzle for you (Score:1, Insightful)
Our civilization would become a thin geological layer, an unusual concentration of (as another posted pointed out) radioactives, metals, and various industrial by-products. Though depressing, that would nonetheless be enough for future intelligent life to at least hypothesize that something intelligent was here.
The mere fact that many natural concentrations of minerals have been mined out should be a clue. Though, I'm sure our oversexed simian cousins would probably come up with a few convoluted hypotheses to explain this in convoluted natural terms.
Re:A puzzle for you (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of fossils from 100 million years ago. Those represent just the tiny percentage of animals that got accidentally buried somehow. We bury our dead on purpose, often with jewelry and in caskets that have metal parts, etc., embalmed, and all lined up in neat rows. I would think there would be plenty of evidence, even in 100 million years. Plus we generate an enormous quantity of artifacts, many of which are at least as durable as bone, and most of which end up in landfills, which is pretty ideal for preservation. The buildings will collapse pretty quickly, but much else will remain. Interestingly the pyramids will probably be around long after most modern buildings, since they are pretty much solid stone and in the desert.
Bonobos are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Bonobos [wikipedia.org] are further back on the evolutionary scale, call it 5 million years before they become intelligent (massive guesstimate).
Is a Bobobo a primitive human any more than a fish is a primitive frog? Apes are as highly evolved as we are, just in a differrent direction. Why would they become intelligent? Would a bigger brain make them better at mating while dangling from a branch? Life on Earth thrived for about 3 billion years before we came along, and unless everything else is exterminated, we're unlikely to be evolution's endpoint.
Re:A puzzle for you (Score:2, Insightful)