A Paleontology Of The Future
6/21/202655 min
What will humanity leave behind?
In this episode, Professor Hannah Fry and VSauce's Michael Stevens explore the traces humans leave behind and what those traces reveal about how we think.
From Tranquility Base, where humanity's first footprints on another world still sit undisturbed in lunar dust, to a three million year old pebble that may represent one of the earliest signs of symbolic thought, they uncover how ordinary objects can become extraordinary windows into our past.
Why would one of our ancestors carry a rock that looked like a face? Who owns the artefacts we leave beyond Earth? And what might future generations learn from our footprints, tools, jokes, habits, and settlements scattered across the Solar System?
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Attribution for images used, no chanages have been made.
W. Bulach - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Jerzy Strzelecki - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
Rakot13 - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
Museum of Human Evolution - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Robert G. Bednarik - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
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Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek
Animator: Sam Benson
Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell
Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe
Producer: Simona Rata
Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter
Head Of Digital: Samuel Oakley
Exec Producer: Neil Fearn
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsHannah Fry· Host0:01
Welcome to The Rest is Science. I'm Hannah Fry.
Michael Stevens· Host0:02
And I'm Michael Stevens. I got a question for you, Hannah.
Hannah Fry· Host0:05
Mm.
Michael Stevens· Host0:05
Tranquility Base.
Hannah Fry· Host0:06
Mm.
Michael Stevens· Host0:07
Familiar with the place?
Hannah Fry· Host0:08
Where they landed.
Michael Stevens· Host0:09
It's where they landed, they being Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. When they landed on the Moon, and they became the first humans to walk on a celestial body that's not the Earth- Mm-hmm ... they did it at what we call Tranquility Base. And a lot of crap is still there, like hundreds of things, bags of their poop- [laughs] ... as well as the more obvious ones, like the flag they planted- [gasps] ... the lower half of the, the lander.
Hannah Fry· Host0:32
Any bags of beard hair, Michael?
Michael Stevens· Host0:34
They have not confessed to leaving any beard hair on the Moon.
Hannah Fry· Host0:36
I like the idea there's a pegboard that's just, uh, just all their, their, their offshoots. Bags of poop, though. Footprints as well?
Michael Stevens· Host0:43
The footprints. Now, when they left the Moon, they had to use this big propulsive blast to escape its gravity, and that blast probably knocked the American flag over. And, oh, we know it did because one of them, I forget who, one of them witnessed the flag being knocked over- Sure ... by their ascent. In subsequent missions to the Moon, they planted the flag much further from the lander.
Hannah Fry· Host1:05
Sure.
Michael Stevens· Host1:05
And those are still standing.
Hannah Fry· Host1:06
Okay.
Michael Stevens· Host1:06
But the flag is still there. It's just on the ground.
Hannah Fry· Host1:09
Mm.
Michael Stevens· Host1:09
It's also been probably bleached white because there's no atmosphere at all.
Hannah Fry· Host1:13
Right.
Michael Stevens· Host1:13
So the solar radiation on the Moon is so much stronger than here.
Hannah Fry· Host1:17
I mean, even if it was on Earth and you left it outdoors- Even on Earth ... you would've, it would be bleached white by now.
Michael Stevens· Host1:21
Yeah. So there are, like, white flags of surrender now- [laughs] ... that, that America has on the Moon, one of which has fallen over.
Hannah Fry· Host1:28
Mm.
Michael Stevens· Host1:28
It's a historical