Geological TOS Review: Episode #1 - "The Man Trap"

"The Man Trap" was the first episode ever aired of Star Trek - The Original Series (TOS), on September 8, 1966, even if it was the sixth episode produced. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) wanted an episode featuring a monster in space as a pilot to get the public's interest. In the episode Captain Kirk and his crew visit the alien planet M-113 to check on an archaeological expedition. The planet's surface appears lifeless, a desert environment with only sparse vegetation. However, ruins seen in the background testify that a long lost civilization once existed here.

In this episode Halite, sodium-chloride or common table salt, plays an important role. The archaeological outpost on the planet M-113 is infiltrated by a mysterious shape-shifting creature that requires salt to survive and is willing to obtain it by any means necessary. Crewman Darnell is the first victim of the "Salt-Vampire" and also the first "red-shirt" (wearing a blue shirt) to be killed in TOS. 

Another plot device are the ruins, remains of a never-explained civilization and it remains unclear if the creature is somehow related to the ancient megalithic builders. This poses an intriguing question. Without the ruins, would a hypothetical exo-scientist, as seen in the episode, be able to infer the existence of a former alien civilization?

What if so much time passed that even the hardest rock used for a monument turned into dust? Buildings and cities are surprisingly short-lived. Even modern iron and concrete resist weathering for just some decades to centuries. Monuments build from sedimentary rocks, like the pyramids, may last some thousand years in dry environments. Reliefs in massive rocks, like Mount Rushmore carved into Harney-Peak granite, may remain recognizable for some hundred-thousand years. 

Could other traces in the environment be used to infer the existence of a civilization gone for millions of years? Could the desert environment of M-113 be the result of the collapse of an alien civilization? Such questions may not only be of interest for the search of extraterrestrial civilizations in fiction and reality, but also for the future of humankind.

"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Earth is the only planet we know for sure can host a technologically advanced civilization. Even if our technological wonders won't survive millions of years into the future, other traces will remain. Since the year 1500, more than three-hundred species of large vertebrates went extinct and many argue that we are witnessing the beginning of the sixth mass extinction. In just a few centuries, we have modified more than 70% of Earth's land surface. Humans today move ten times more sediments than all natural processes combined, like landslides or rivers.

Since the industrial revolution in the 19th century, humans have modified the concentration and flux of carbon and nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere. New artificial materials, like plastic, are polluting the environment. Future geologists may find rare traces like “technofossils” - anomalous minerals or unnatural materials like plastiglomerate in the geological record. It is unknown how long such artificial materials will survive in the geological record. If buried in sediments, like plastic fragments on the bottom of the sea, maybe some million years. Eventually, heat, pressure and time will break the molecules apart and erase any direct evidence for humanity's former presence on Earth.

Chemical signatures preserved in sedimentary rocks, caused by the changes in abundance of certain elements, like carbon (resulting from burning fossil fuels), nitrogen (used as fertilizer to feed seven billion people), radioactive or rare earth elements (used in modern technology), may still be detectable after billion of years. However, there are natural processes that may mimic such anomalous concentrations. The famous Oklo-reactor, a two billion years old uranium ore deposit that experienced a slow nuclear fission, was likely not built by an ancient civilization but formed by microbial activity.

Even climate change alone will not be sure evidence of a technologically advanced civilization. In the past, there were geological epochs with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide. For example, 55 million years ago, during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, over some thousands of years a massive flux of greenhouse gases from the ocean into the atmosphere occurred and Earth's global temperature rose by 8°C in response. However, the speed humans are changing the climate is unprecedented in the history of the Earth.

Combining various observations, like the rate of changes preserved in the geological record, the presence of anomalous materials, a spike of certain chemical elements and the extinction of species, future alien geologists visiting Earth may realize that a civilization, technologically advanced enough to influence the entire planet, once existed here. Will they find a thin layer of boundary clay, suggesting a sudden catastrophe ending this civilization? Was it a gradual demise following environmental problems? Or did the civilization survive still for thousands of years by adapting or changing its behavior in time? In the stratigraphic record time can be compressed and even future geologist may not be able to clearly distinguish between a sudden event, lasting just some centuries, or a prolonged era of a hundred thousand years.

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