SKIRMISHER

New Scientist imagines Earth sans human beings. And in this poignant little hypothetical scenario, Earth does not locks itself up in a room, cries all night, and slashes its wrists over losing its most pervasive surface inhabitant — apparently, the planet can fairly quickly move on and heal itself if it suddenly loses all human beings.

And it lives happily ever after.

Finally a brief, century-long pulse of radio waves will forever radiate out across the galaxy and beyond, proof - for anything that cares and is able to listen - that we once had something to say and a way to say it.

But these will be flimsy souvenirs, almost pathetic reminders of a civilisation that once thought itself the pinnacle of achievement. Within a few million years, erosion and possibly another ice age or two will have obliterated most of even these faint traces. If another intelligent species ever evolves on the Earth - and that is by no means certain, given how long life flourished before we came along - it may well have no inkling that we were ever here save for a few peculiar fossils and ossified relics. The humbling - and perversely comforting - reality is that the Earth will forget us remarkably quickly.

via NEW SCIENTIST

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