End of the world theories
Asteroids
Sixty-five million years ago, an object, possibly a comet a few times larger than the one landed on by the Philae probe a while ago, hit the Mexican coast and triggered a global winter that wiped out the dinosaurs. And in 1908, a smaller object hit a remote part of Siberia and devastated hundreds of square miles of forest. This year, 100 scientists, including Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal called for the creation of a global warning system to alert us if a killer rock is on the way.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11272393/Asteroids-could-wipe-out-humanity-warn-Richard-Dawkins-and-Brian-Cox.html
Nuclear war
Many scientists are still worried about the classic end-of-the-world threat: global nuclear war. Beyond North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's saber rattling and Iran's secretive nuclear efforts, massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons around the globe could wreak destruction if they were to get into the wrong hands. Last year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nontechnical magazine on global security founded in 1945 by former Manhattan project physicists, moved the Doomsday Clock, at five minutes to midnight. The Doomsday Clock shows how close humanity is to destruction via nuclear or biological weapons or global climate change.
www.livescience.com/17874-doomsday-clock-infographic.html
Man-made black hole
Ever since the first atomic bomb was developed back in 1945, scientists have wondered whether the raw power of some of the reactions they set in motion could end up causing catastrophic problems. The worry hasn't faded. When Brookhaven National Laboratory prepared to fire up its Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, speculation circulated that the experiments at the facility could create a black hole which would then consume Earth. When the LHC was first switched on, the same rumors resurfaced. Many physicists dismiss the threat offhand—but nobody's really, really sure that it couldn't happen.
gizmodo.com/5048298/large-hadron-collider-has-black-hole-button
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We're a simulation
Many scientists have pointed out that there is something fishy about our universe. The physical constants – the numbers governing the fundamental forces and masses of nature – seem fine-tuned to allow life of some form to exist. The great physicist Sir Fred Hoyle once wondered if the Universe might be a “put-up job”.
More recently, the Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom has speculated that our Universe may be one of countless “simulations” running in some alien computer, much like a computer game. If so, we have to hope that the beings behind our fake universe are benign – and do not reach for the off-button should we start misbehaving.
gizmodo.com/5950832/how-to-tell-if-the-universe-is-a-computer-simulation
(now for the truly disturbing part)
According to Bostrom’s calculations, if certain assumptions are made then there is a greater than 50 per cent chance that our universe is not real. And the increasingly puzzling absence of any evidence of alien life may be indirect evidence that the Universe is not what it seems.
www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
Solar storm
Solar storms happen all the time: the sun sends wave upon wave of charged particles through space, and they whizz through our atmosphere at 4 million mph. Large storms result in particularly amazing light shows, comparable to the Northern lights. However, the Earth hasn't experienced a major solar storm since 1859. Then, the storm was intense enough to instantaneously set fire to telegraph lines—but that was before the days of the electricity grid, power in homes and the slew of technology that we all depend on each and every day. These days, a storm like that—or worse—could wreak untold havoc.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
Pandemic
New deadly pathogens crop up every year: Recent pandemics have included outbreaks of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), bird flu, and, most recently, a coronavirus called MERS that originated in Saudi Arabia. And because of our highly interconnected, global economy, a deadly disease could spread like wildfire.
"The threat of a global pandemic is very real," said Joseph Miller, co-author (along with Ken Miller) of the textbook "Biology" (Prentice Hall, 2010).
news.discovery.com/human/health/virual-super-pandemic-how-far-130918.htm
Biological warfare
It might sound like something straight outta Hollywood, but biological warfare poses a very real and dangerous threat. Anthrax may have been wildly hyped in the past, but in reality it remains an effective means of taking out large swathes of the population. Weaponized in the form of aerosol particles of 1.5 to 5 microns, it could cause fatalities in 90 percent of the population. Things don't stop at toxins like anthrax, either; bear in mind that—even though it might take more than a day—an engineered avian flu could kill half the world's humans. A cursory glance at a list of—officially recognised—institutions involved in biological warfare research suggests that this is something that we should definitely be worried about.
gizmodo.com/5863078/engineered-avian-flu-could-kill-half-the-worlds-humans
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#List_of_BW_institutions.2C_programs.2C_projects_and_sites_by_country
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Machines
Professor Hawking is not worried about armies of autonomous drones taking over the world, but something more subtle – and more sinister. Some technologists believe that an event they call The Singularity is only a few decades away. This is a point at which the combined networked computing power of the world’s AI systems begins a massive, runaway increase in capability – an explosion in machine intelligence. By then, we will probably have handed over control to most of our vital systems, from food distribution networks to power plants, sewage and water treatment works and the global banking system. The machines could bring us to our knees without a shot being fired. And we cannot simply pull the plug, because they control the power supplies.
www.technewsdaily.com/17898-technological-singularity-definition.html
Volcanic eruption
If you thought the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland caused problems, think again. Over two million years ago, a massive volcanic eruption—which happened where Yellowstone National Park now stands—produced 600 cubic miles of dust and ash. For some perspective, that's 10,000 times worse than Eyjafjallajökull. All it would take to bring the planet to its knees would be a couple of such eruptions in close succession. And the next Yellowstone super eruption is closer than you think.
gizmodo.com/5906622/the-yellowstone-supereruption-is-closer-than-you-think
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