Ten Ways the World Will End
Will it be a solar flare? Or a gamma-ray
burst? How the earth’s gonna end
Study as we lay out the odds.
In this article we count the ways the world
will end. Start worrying in a few million years about a cosmic dust collision,
when the sun hits the closest spiral arm of our galaxy. Take your chances with
an exploding star. Or manage to escape these threats, and you just get an extra
10^35 years before all matter decays anyway.
|
Event
|
Damage
|
Odds
of fatality
(per
lifetime)
|
Preventable
|
|
asteroid
impact
|
Local
for a small rock, global for a big one
|
1
in 700,000
|
Almost
100% preventable
Identify
potential impactors, then blow them up or push them out of the way
|
|
solar
flare
|
Collapse
of power grid, potential ozone depletion
|
0*
|
Non-preventable,
but mitigatable
Build
robust power grids
|
|
supernova
|
Ozone
depletion, radiation
|
1
in 10,000,000
|
Not
preventable
|
|
gamma-ray
burst
|
Ozone
depletion, radiation, setting planet on fire
|
1
in 14,000,000
|
Not
preventable
|
|
black
hole
|
Destruction
of Earth
|
1 in
1,000,000,000,000
|
Not
preventable
|
|
alien
attack
|
Humanity
wiped out by aliens, space bugs give us runny noses
|
?
|
Preventable,
assuming we colonize the galaxy first.
|
|
death
of the sun
|
Earth
cooked to a crisp
|
0
†
|
Not
preventable, but we have a long time to go yet
|
|
galactic
doom
|
Ice
ages, radiation, eaten by super massive black hole
|
0
†
|
Not
preventable, but again, none of these will happen on a human timescale
|
|
death
of the universe
|
Decay
of all matter, collapse of false vacuum
|
0
†
|
Not
preventable, but dwarfs any timescale we can imagine
|
* Fatalities are very unlikely from a solar
event, but they can still cause extensive damage.
† These events all take billions of years (at
least!) to unfold, so the chances of them happening? during your lifetime are
zero, but are inevitable over longer times.
|