Adam Frank

“to say here’s the things you’d want to look for in a much more high-resolution way in order to see whether or not there was ever a civilization before us.”

Adam Frank · said date not stated · reported 2026-07-25

Frank explained the paper's purpose was to identify what evidence to look for when searching for past civilizations.

“because, of course, we know that there have been no other civilizations on Earth.”

Adam Frank · said date not stated · reported 2026-07-25

Frank told Schmidt in 2017 that he was looking at other planets for signs of civilizations triggering climate change.

“You publish a paper, it’s like, ‘Woo, this is great,’ and then somebody comes along and says, you’re wrong.”

Adam Frank · said date not stated · reported 2026-07-25

Frank described how the scientific process works when a paper is published and others challenge its findings.

“Are we an experiment that the planet has run, which is going to fail?”

Adam Frank · said date not stated · reported 2026-07-25

Frank questioned whether human civilization is a planetary experiment destined to fail.

“Every one of those strata is ground up rock that keeps a memory of what the chemistry of the Earth was like then.”

Adam Frank · said date not stated · reported 2026-07-25

Frank used the Grand Canyon as an example of how geological strata preserve records of Earth's past chemistry.

“These questions are all relevant to exactly the moment that we’re in,”

Adam Frank · said date not stated · reported 2026-07-25

Frank said the questions raised by the Silurian hypothesis are relevant to the current moment of human-driven climate change.

“We are pushing the planet into a new climate regime … we know this is true, right? And yet we’re not doing anything about it.”

Adam Frank · said date not stated · reported 2026-07-25

Frank noted that humans are altering the climate yet failing to act on it.