• @HauntedCupcake
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      497 months ago

      It takes a lot of energy to send them back in time

      • @Agent641
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        7 months ago

        Verison charges an arm and a leg to time-bandwidth

  • @trxxruraxvr
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    447 months ago

    It probably won’t be that long before some organism evolves the ability to digest plastic.

      • @trxxruraxvr
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        7 months ago

        Cool, didn’t know that. Now just hope they don’t make us sick or we’re really screwed. With all the microplastics in our bodies they’re going to be everywhere.

        • @[email protected]
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          -27 months ago

          The waste is toxic. Because the input is toxic, but locked into relatively stable polymers, until something breaks it down.

          • @[email protected]
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            227 months ago

            Toxicity isn’t as simple as “toxic = toxic + toxic.” While some byproducts of plastic breakdown are toxic, the bacteria are further dissolving those as well, going until they get glucose, as they wouldn’t be able to eat it if that wasn’t the end product. There are probably still some toxic byproducts that get excreted rather than broken down, but plastic breakdown already releases toxins under normal conditions, so that’s already a problem we’re going to have to tackle. If these bacteria can get past the first issue of breaking it down in the first place, then that’s a net positive.

            • Instigate
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              167 months ago

              Yeah, if “toxic + toxic = toxic” made sense then table salt would be extremely dangerous.

              Sodium = extremely volatile and usually explosive metal when interacting with water (more than half of what makes us)

              Chlorine = gas at room temperature that can kill you in minutes at concentrations of 1000ppm or more

              Sodium + Chlorine = Sodium Chloride = delicious table salt that makes food yummy and helps power our neurons

              • @[email protected]
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                57 months ago

                Thinking about it, we work on a whole bunch of highly volatile chemicals bound to a bit less volatile ones for stability.

                • Instigate
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                  37 months ago

                  We’re biochemical foundries. It’s pretty damn cool.

            • @[email protected]
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              7 months ago

              It’s a part of a potential solution, but right now if you dump a bunch of plastivores in a trash pit instead of a bunch of plastic in a hole that won’t break down from a thousand years you get a toxic slurry capable of entering groundwater supplies.

              Of course, micro plastics are also doing that, so pick your poison I suppose.

    • @Agent641
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      7 months ago

      Y’all aren’t crabbing-out yet?

  • @Got_Bent
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    147 months ago

    That’s enough time for us to evolve into carbon dioxide plastic eating beings, isn’t it?

    • @[email protected]
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      237 months ago

      For something completely new like that 50k years is not all that much.

      Perhaps enough time for the existing plastic eating bacteria to spread across the world, tho a lot of plastics are buried deep in soil already, so artefacts might survive. Same as with wood, before the wood/cellulose eating bacteria got all over the place, dead trees just for buried. So at high pressure plastic might turn once again into oil.

    • @[email protected]
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      97 months ago

      Those crabs will probably just be microplastic by then, at least if our trajectory as a species has anything to say about it.

  • @[email protected]
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    7 months ago

    I think 50k years is a bit too short for major evolution to happen*. And 5 million years too long for plastic figures.

    * We needed about 100k to adapt our body hair to clothes.