After a solar flare like the one depicted in the movie "Knowing", would any sign of our civilization be left?

There was a documentary based on similar lines titled 'Life After People'.

It was nothing to do with solar flares but it raised the question "If all human life suddenly disappeared, what evidence would be left of our existence ?" And the answer was, after maybe 10,000 years or so, not very much visible evidence of our civilization would exist at all.

Buildings quickly deteriorate when they aren't being maintained. Seeds get rooted into stonework and concrete, allowing in water which freezes numerous times over successive winters causing the stonework to crumble. Windows can break or be blown in, allowing all the elements into the building interiors. Concrete roads and sidewalks get mosses growing over them, which eventually form a topsoil layer for other plants, the roots of which will break up concrete or tarmac. Rust gets into metal frameworks and cables and given enough years, successive storms and earthquakes, even our great skyscrapers will topple to the ground eventually, bringing other buildings down with them as they collapse. We can already see evidence of this deterioration happening in the abandoned city of Pripyat in Russia, which was evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster and nobody ever returned. Contrary to expectations, the local wildlife isn't doing too badly with the absence of humans. The city itself however has gone way beyond the point of no return after just 20 or so years.

As for our public records and libraries, paper doesn't last long unless its environment can be kept cool and dry. Molds form and the paper rots. As for digital data, it's not even known how long data will last on DVDs and compact discs but the best estimate so far is around 50-100 years maximum.

One of the only reasons we know so much about the ancient Egyptians is that they wrote a great deal in stone, but even their great ruins and pyramids will eventually disappear back into the desert after a few thousand more years. Our modern civilization will have far less visible evidence 5-10 thousand years hence. The experts estimated that one building that would likely still be visible 10,000 years from now is the Hoover Dam, since it was built to be as sturdy as the canyon it was built into. Even that will fail one day and allow its waters to cascade into the canyon below. Our greatest cities such a New York, London or Paris will just be layers of rubble buried somewhere beneath thick green forests.

If you include in the scenario your solar flare scorching the entire surface of the planet then the deterioration rate will likely occur even faster. I think that plant life will return eventually, and animal life once again, but expect it to take a long time. Great cataclysms have befallen this planet before. Not least of all the great extinction event which wiped out the dinosaurs 60 million years ago, and that is just one of numerous extinction events in the planets history.

At least it's re-assuring to know that the planet will one day recover after we've gone and become a paradise again.

So to answer your question properly, would an alien archaeologist know we were ever here ? Well I'd say chances are they would be able to tell but they'd have to look very closely. There'd be next to no visible evidence anywhere on the surface a few thousands years after a massive solar flare event featured in the movie, but if they look just beneath the surface of the planet, a geophysical survey like archaeologist do today, then you should see evidence of the layout of what were once streets and roads and cities, if they happen to look in the right places.

a million) How do they be responsive to the place and the thank you to define us? 2) Do any of the interior of sight civilizations (say, interior of a million,000 easy years) have interstellar shuttle? 3) or perhaps astronomy? 4) Our planet hasn't reached some form of threshold for touch? 5) possibly they do no longer care. 6) probable they seem to be a century or 2 at the back of us. 7) we are greater progressed then they're. 8) we are it for this area of the galaxy. the suitable pint being is that we are a tiny needle in the galactic haystack. What we take for cutting-edge technologies (radio, spaceflight, inner combustion engine), basically hasn't been around that long (type of decrease than 2 hundred years). The signatures from those technologies (pollutants) have not reached a severe sufficient threshold for distant detection (i'm guessing by around 50 easy years). And to think of that E.T. is a techniques greater progressed then we are is speculative fiction fiction, at ultimate. We basically don't be responsive to at this element. whilst I have not have been given any subject assuming that there is 1000's of life out and approximately in the Universe, we basically have 0 evidence previous our planet that there is life accessible.