Durability/aging of materials

[Alex]

I'd like to use an ancient ruin, but deciding how old it might be is tricky. I could just use an arbitrary time in the past, but I want to have a little more science in my science fiction.

Let's look at materials of various ages and how they stand the test of time. We have lots of examples of stone age tools. Most are metal, stone, pottery, or bone and in bad condition from corrosion, but their simple nature makes them easily recognizable thousands of years later. Stone and brick constructions in some climates remain today, but those made from organics are long gone. Middle ages and Rennaisance tools and manuscripts are not rare but are very delicate: brittle and faded. There are homes that are two or three hundred years old all over Europe and a few in northeastern USA. Early Industrial Age tools, vehicles, etc are recognizable but non-functional. Rubber and fabrics decay in decades. Metal frames rust and structures collapse. Modern materials may last longer because of alloys and artificial materials and coatings designed to resist corrosion. However it seems like functionality is even shorter lived now than ever as devices fail and are replaced. Consider a computer or a car. The replacement cycle and failure rates are very high after a few years. Magnetic materials become useless after 5-10 years, optical materials decay anywhere from a year to a decade (depending on whether you get cheap bulk disks or "archival quality" and the environmental conditions).

Now, we're talking about Star Trek. Far future, lots of technological advances. Consider other civilizations of similar technology levels. How long would their world last after they all died? What would remain after 1,000 years? 10,000? 100,000? Millions? A billion? Assuming something around the TNG (mid to late 24th century) era, how long could a civilization have been lost and we could still obtain useful information about their last days? How long would their buildings stand, their computers function, their storage media hold files, their technology (transporters, engines, scanners, etc) work? I'm sure that in the 24th century we're talking about keeping their buildings and structures (ships, bases, etc) from corroding for 10,000 years. Will their power source still run? Will their computers still be solving problems or waiting for input? I doubt both of those, but I'm open to hearing speculation from the group. I think 1,000 years might be pushing either of those, even with automated maintenance. As long as the data crystals or whatever they use don't decay, the information can be retrieved by a visitor with equal technology. But I don't think anything like automated defenses or greeting messages would remain without functioning computers which puts a limitation on how long a dead world might be interesting as a place to explore.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Heh... I was just rereading 'At the Mountains of Madness.'


It depends a lot on local conditions–how much change is there in the environment? A structure down a steep canyon on the moon would probably still be there hundreds of thousands of years later, even if it's wood. An environmentally active planet would devour the most stable structure in a century at most. How long before roots and vines topple all the stones of Chichen Itza?

Though part of our development cycle, today, is planned obsolescence. Cars and other appliances barely last a decade, if two, before they basically need to be scrapped. If you built something like a laptop to last, who knows how long it could actually function?

Remember, though, that there's various 'stasis' technologies which might preserve buildings beyond their otherwise 'natural' lifespans. Aside from the Ancient Humanoids' holomessage, I think the oldest recovered object in Trek is the spaceship in 'beyond the farthest star,' which probably had some sort of deflector shields to keep the micrometeorites from eroding it, and looked kind of bio-mechanical.

Anyway, does it matter in the story how old it is, specifically?

[Alex]

Agreed that in ideal conditions, materials won't age. A ship in the vaccuum of space or a base on a moon with no atmosphere should be perfectly preserved for millions of years if you can keep anything from striking it (and Star Trek shields show that is an easy thing). But on standard conditions of a Class-M planet where one can expect a large and thriving civilization, the environment will inevitably break down any signs of life. Just how long is my question. In arid lands (deserts, be they arctic or tropical) materials will remain preserved much longer. In lands with heavy water flow and lots of life forms, it is certain that the decomposition will occur more quickly. Would technology be able to preserve the surface civilization of a world? Would there be parts of such a world important enough to take extra precautions to ensure longevity?

It doesn't matter too much how old my dead civilization is, but that is a question I'm sure might come up, and Trek sensors have demonstrated that they have no trouble indicating the age of very old things, at least to a certain magnitude (Beyond the Farthest Star which you identify). I'd like an old civilization at a point where the surface evidence is gone but some technology still functions underground, in space, and other protected environments.

I think the oldest artificial construction in Star Trek is the Guardian of Forever. The Guardian claims to be on the order of at least five billion years old.

[Captain Otto]

It all boils down to this what is your ancient ruin build off.
If it is build out of an superdense material and there aren't any outside natural forces that threaten to destroy it, it stands a good chance to be around after 10.000 years. A subterranean vault containing the remnants of a long vanished civilisation stands a good chance to contain some valuable artifacts preserved and untouched by the hand of time as well. If they are properly prepared that is.

Working machinery or computers are another matter entirely. There may also be compatibility problems with these as well. Think of the Iconian Software that led to the destruction of the Yamato in TNG's Episode "Contagion".

Though part of our development cycle, today, is planned obsolescence. Cars and other appliances barely last a decade, if two, before they basically need to be scrapped. If you built something like a laptop to last, who knows how long it could actually function?

I agree with that: nothing is eternal, and goods intended for consumption aren't really build to last.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

I think the oldest artificial construction in Star Trek is the Guardian of Forever. The Guardian claims to be on the order of at least five billion years old.

The Guardian was a little more poetic about it, haha. It also said "it was its own beginning, and its own end," which implies that when dealing with the Guardian, there's not going to be same relationship with time that linear humanoids expect.

Anyway, if you want stuff like that to still be totally functional, it should probably be 'alive.' Not in the sense of just moving around, but having the ability to repair and maintain it's own constituent parts. Either advanced self-replication (in the trek replicator sense), some nanites tasked with keeping it in working order (in which case, it might literally be alive), or a secret cult of people–inbred cave-dwellers, ancients in stasis, or humanoid robots–who keep fixing it. Think the Halo, in Halo–it's got sentinels and the little onboard A.I. whose job is simply puttering around making sure things are shipshape.

[black campbellq]

Agreed that in ideal conditions, materials won't age. A ship in the vaccuum of space or a base on a moon with no atmosphere should be perfectly preserved for millions of years if you can keep anything from striking it (and Star Trek shields show that is an easy thing).

Although depending on the exposure to radiation and storage media, you could expect data to have been badly corrupted -- so a ship might be physically intact, but the computers would be dead. You might also see thermal-related damage to display panels, etc.

[Alex]

Working machinery or computers are another matter entirely. There may also be compatibility problems with these as well. Think of the Iconian Software that led to the destruction of the Yamato in TNG's Episode "Contagion".

That is where my thinking started. I was going to use the Iconians but now think my own creation will be fun. For that I need to decide if on a planet, is 10,000 years enough time for buildings to vanish? Collapse but still be recognizable? Locatable but not recognizable? And all of this within the time frame that would allow 24th century technology, if maintained by automated or very rare human attention, to still function if specially designed for long-term neglect. Is my civ 1,000 years dead, 10,000 years dead, or 100,000 years dead? For a starting point.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

That is where my thinking started. I was going to use the Iconians but now think my own creation will be fun. For that I need to decide if on a planet, is 10,000 years enough time for buildings to vanish? Collapse but still be recognizable? Locatable but not recognizable? And all of this within the time frame that would allow 24th century technology, if maintained by automated or very rare human attention, to still function if specially designed for long-term neglect. Is my civ 1,000 years dead, 10,000 years dead, or 100,000 years dead? For a starting point.

Hmm. Do you think your players would rather suss out the age of the ruins from the evidence themselves, or say "We scan them–how old?"

[C5]

You could also change the conditions of the planet. We tend to view corrosion from an Earth-centric point of view, but maybe it doesn't happen the same way on another world.

Let's suppose for instance that the ancient civilisation managed to terraform its world so much that there erosion is a lot less likely to occyr (possibly because the planet itself had interesting properties to start with). Wind is almost inexistant, rains occur only in predefined areas, the world is sterile (there are no bacteria nor virii), and most of the building were designed to last (I don't think duranium can rust or corrode). This could be maintained by satellites, or structures on the surface.
Add to that some self-recharging power sources (maybe from the sun, the tides, or anything else), and circuits that only get powered when they are needed (so as not to be unduly sollicited).

This could lead to ruins that are very well conserved, to the point that Starfleet sensors could be fooled into believing it's much recent than it actually is (maybe also some radiation altered the C14-like analysis).

[Tobian]

Depends on what you want them to find, and how it is preserved.

There are plenty of examples of things which will be preserved for thousands of years, which shouldn't be. Such as the man they found frozen in the swiss alps who'd been there since neolithic times! it has also to be said that finding artifacts and incredible finds like that would be orders of magnitude easier using highly advanced sensors. In the modern world we have metal detectors and sisemographic sensors, or areal photograps... When you can in minutes take a scan of an area, and get a real-time 3d image of the sedimentary layers and any useful or interesting objects, it takes out a LOT of the guesswork and chore to the thing.. why spend 16 hours sifting soil, when you can do a sensor sweep and get all the data on the detrius under there you need?!

How long the 'remains' will last will depend really on a combination of a) the technology level of that civilisation, b) how much they did to preserve it and c) the local environmental conditions.

If anything has survived for tens of thousands of years there are a number of extreme circumstances that it has, and the amount of it will be very sparing... In 100,000 years time archaeologists will probably find a wealth of stuff on us, but mostly buried nappies

Quite often all we can know about a civilisation is based on how permanent it's structures are. We know a lot about Egypt, because they made a lot of things in stone, and they carved information on it, and the peculiar conditions of their environment, meant that even organic material has been preserved for 5000 years. Most civilisations aren't so nearly wealthy in their remains, because they didn't build such massive permanent structures, in such volume! Egypt also had a funerary culture, in which they preserved things a person would need in his 'next life' which were identical to his 'current life' so we have tens of thousands of preserved records of their culture, sealed in boxes

other variables... Off the west coast of India there are submerged cities, which some people estimate may be as much as 10,000 years old (due to the time when they were last above water) covered in layers of silt and sediment, anything that will remain preserved, will, if the conditions are fairly stable (I.e. not too close to geological hot zones) will probably stay there, in their current state for a few more million years..

Another good example is Pompei and Herculaneum. the horrible disaster which struck their civilisation perfectly preserved it, down to the minutae of their daily lives. Now if you are dealing with a 'dead' civilisation, why did it die? If it was something like that then the chances of them recovering something is high!

Also one of the biggest factors is - who else has been there?! Both in the context of 'looters' looking to pillage rare artefacts from a long dead civilisation, or simply the other people who have lived there. Most of what makes archaeology hard in our era is that there are things built on top of it, other civilisations which have come and gone in the millennia since it died off. The bones of your old civilisation could be currently occupied by the remnants of it, at a more privative state, with almost no knowledge of what they are living in: Just because a civilisation has 'died' doesn't mean EVERYONE died... there is no more 'Rome' but there are plenty of Italians

With regards to computer information, the problem is we only have what we use NOW as an example to extrapolate from. Our computers and technologies are very fragile, but computer systems from fairly advanced cultures may well have a hell of a lot more durability than our present technology. Sure 'magnetic media' is very fragile, but it's pretty outdated even for us, and the optical technologies are already quite a bit more longlived, and a bit more rugged. It's not hard to imagine media or systems, which are much more rugged, and more tolerant of single bit errors, and capable of repairing it's self in a limited capacity. Anything based on solid state crystals would be very durable and run pretty flawlessly for ages, as 'light' doesn't do much damage hehe. When you have replication based technology, you can even beam out damaged chips and beam in new one's - as long as you have at least 2 replicator units, and backup capacity, that system could keep going indefinatelly!

[Tricky]

All this talk about ruins and ancient buildings reminded me of something from the Gamma World rpg. In the nuke-blasted ruins of some american city, is a building in pristine condition! I mean like "we just opened today, would you like to see the place?" condition. The people that live in the ruins fear it, mostly because nothing seems to hurt it! You shoot up the lobby, come back in the morning and everything is fine. (well, they also fear it because no one's ever come back from going to the hight levels.....), but that would be interesting for an away team: Chunks of concrete, corroded metals and broken composites. Then A building in complete working order!

Getting back to the subject, it really is up to you, but for the most part look at conditions and building materials. The pyramids are still around; built of stone and existing in the desert (at least desert now) and being possibly 20,000 years old (ask Graham Hancock....). What will ancient New York look like thousands of years from now, if our civilization fell today? Would forests reclaim it?

[LUGTrekGM]

I would just handle this by making the details fit the plot, as needed.

It's all a story, anyway.

What effect are you trying to achieve, then go with that.

[spshu]

I read a book about the possibility that humans were from another planet or were visit by and had living amoungst us aliens (human looking.) Suppositely these others were responsible for the pyraminds, tales of gods and were most likely the source of the Atlantians. Supposed they claim that there are towers in China (knownledge of them are restrict by the Communist government supposedly) of unknown composition that have been there since before the begining of history.