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Hollywood films concerning the end of the world abound, from Armageddon to the Day After Tomorrow. If a worldwide catastrophe is imminent, what may be the cause of the extinction of all life on Earth?
Such a catastrophe may be brought on by a nuclear war, a huge asteroid impact, a wandering black hole, the emergence of killer robots, or the reversal of our planet’s magnetic field.
Many of these may sound unrealistic, but the danger is now very real since the Doomsday Clock is set at a record 90 seconds to midnight this year, and experts are warning that there is a larger risk than ever before to humanity’s continuing survival.
How, therefore, may these disastrous prospects materialize? MailOnline examines.
Since it put an end to the dinosaurs’ dominion 66 million years ago, there is a good likelihood that a space rock-related apocalypse will occur in the future.
When the Chicxulub asteroid struck a shallow sea in the present-day Gulf of Mexico, it caused a gigantic tsunami and a vast cloud of soot and dust that destroyed 75% of the planet’s animal and plant life and caused climate change.
According to astronomers, our planet should be struck by one of these enormous asteroids around every 100 million years.
Although it would put us on track for another extinction-level catastrophe in around 30 million years, it is unlikely to be as dangerous as Chicxulub given ongoing technological advancements.
NASA successfully completed the first-ever planetary defense test for humans last year, which included deflecting an asteroid far out in space.
A 520-foot (160-meter) space rock called Dimorphos collided with the US space agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft at 14,000 miles per hour, changing its orbit.
Although Dimorphos posed no threat to mankind, the mission’s success indicates that we would already have a strong chance of avoiding any massive asteroid that was headed toward Earth.
In addition to the enhanced surveillance, there is very little chance of a significant impact since NASA is presently unaware of any comets or asteroids that are headed straight for Earth.
Overall, it seems unlikely that humanity will suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs, even if popular movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon warn of the cataclysmic threats posed by asteroids.
2. Robots that kill
The threats presented by the development of artificial intelligence (AI) systems have received a lot of attention lately. A Silicon Valley civil war has broken out over whether more should be done
To regulate the quickly changing technology in the wake of the success of chatbots like ChatGPT, which have taken the globe by storm since their debut at the end of last year.
With Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak on one side of the debate and Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft founder Bill Gates on the other,
The world’s brightest minds are divided on whether artificial intelligence is a good or negative thing for mankind.
When over 1,000 industry titans signed a statement earlier this year demanding a halt to the “dangerous race” to develop AI, the acrimonious dispute erupted into the public eye.
Before humans lose control of the technology and run the possibility of being wiped out by robots, they claimed, immediate action was required.
‘Godfather of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton resigned from Google last week, expressing concerns that’scary’ chatbots would soon surpass humans in intelligence, further escalating the dispute.
He warned that while they can now store more broad information than the human brain, it will only be a matter of time before AI surpasses humans in thinking as well.
At this point, he said, “bad actors” like Russian President Vladimir Putin might program robots to “get more power” by using AI for “bad things.”
Concerns regarding AI have been raised by several experts before Dr. Hinton. While the UN Secretary-General has previously advocated for a prohibition on “machines that have the power to kill,”
Famous MIT researcher Max Tegmark cautioned in 2018 that humans might one day become enslaved by the intelligent computers they construct.
Antonio Guterres’ participation was prompted by concerns that robots that can choose and strike targets without human assistance may soon be developed as a result of AI advancements.
Scientists and activists have cautioned that such robots might threaten human very survival, but they also constitute the ‘third revolution’ in combat after gunpowder and nuclear weapons.
Even if science fiction movies like “The Terminator” and “I, Robot” have terrifying killing robots nearby, the likelihood that they will trigger the end of the world is very concerning.
The singularity—the moment when artificial intelligence surpasses human intellect—is approaching, according to many computer experts, so we will soon know whether robots will benefit or harm humans.
Supervolcanoes have the capacity to bring about our species’ fiery annihilation, and some people believe they pose the greatest natural danger to human survival.
The good news is that the 20 known supervolcanoes on Earth relatively rarely erupt, about once per 100,000 years. However, when they do, the climate and ecosystem of our world are severely impacted.
Among the most well-known in the world, Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park is still quite active and has erupted three times in the last 2.1 million years.