Geniuses predict how the world will end, and how to avoid it

This is unreal,i meet lots of "Geniuses" but usually in the pub?
I think the World will end when I die! lol.

Read this article:-

FOR decades Hollywood has been making films about the end of the world and how, sometimes, plucky humans manage to avert it.

Now some of the world's finest minds have come together to draw up some real-life doomsday scenarios - and work out how mankind could avoid being wiped out.

From killer computers to crippling cyber-attacks by terrorists using the internet to the release of engineered diseases, the members of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk warn that the future could be far from rosy.

But once the threats have been identified the group - led by Astronomer Royal Martin Rees and including Stephen Hawking - intends to devise ways of "ensuring our own species has a long-term future".

Although nuclear annihilation and a giant asteroid obliterating the planet remain distinct, if unlikely, possibilities, Lord Rees believes "the main threats to sustained human existence now come from people, not from nature".

Other scenarios being considered by the 27-strong group - which also involves academics from Oxford, Imperial, Harvard and Berkeley - include extreme weather, fast-spreading pandemics, and war or sabotage resulting in a shortage of food and resources.

Speaking at the British Science Festival at Newcastle University, Lord Rees said: "In future decades, events with low probability but catastrophic consequences may loom high on the political agenda.

"That's why some of us in Cambridge - both natural and social scientists - plan, with colleagues at Oxford and elsewhere, to inaugurate a research programme to compile a more complete register of these 'existential risks', and to assess how to enhance resilience against the more credible ones."

Lord Rees's co-founders in CSER are Jaan Tallinn, one of the people behind internet phone service Skype, and Cambridge philosopher Professor Huw Price.

The group says in its manifesto: "Our goal is to steer a small fraction of Cambridge's great intellectual resources ... to the task of ensuring that our own species has a long-term future. In the process, we hope to make it a little more certain that we humans will be around to celebrate the university's own millennium, now less than two centuries hence."

CSER member Professor David Spiegelhalter, a Cambridge statistician, said: "Asteroids crashing on Earth are an existential threat, but there is not really a lot we can do about preventing such an event.

"The ones that we are not so well aware of are the technological threats. Our reliance on technology leaves us vulnerable to it. We use interconnected systems for everything from power, to food supply and banking, which means there can be real trouble if things go wrong or they are sabotaged.

"In a modern, efficient world, we no longer stockpile food. If the supply is disrupted for any reason, it would take about 48 hours before it runs out and riots begin."

How the world could end, according to the world's biggest brains:

Intelligent technology: A network of computers could develop a mind of its own. Machines could direct resources towards their own goals at the expense of human needs such as food and threaten mankind.

Cyber attacks: Power grids, air traffic control, banking and communications rely on interconnected computer systems. If these networks collapse due to action by enemy nations or terrorists, the paralysis could result in society breaking down.

Engineered infection: A man-made super virus or bacteria with no antidote escapes the lab or is released by terrorists. Millions die.

Food supply sabotage: Efficient distribution networks mean many Western nations have only 48 hours worth of food stockpiled. Any disruption would result in panic buying and riots.

Extreme weather: As the Earth continues to warm a tipping point is reached and the process snowballs, resulting in irreversible and worsening natural disasters.

Fast-spreading pandemic: International travel means a new killer virus, mutated from animals, could travel the globe in days, wiping out millions before a vaccine can be developed.

War: Growing populations put a strain on water and food resources. Nations will go to war to protect or capture these precious supplies.

Nuclear apocalypse: Nations with atom bombs launch targeted strikes leading to all-out warfare and global loss of life. Also fears nuclear warheads could fall into terrorist hands.

Asteroid impact: A giant asteroid is believed to have killed off the dinosaurs. Some fear a similar impact could do the same for mankind.


Billy

Re: Geniuses predict how the world will end, and how to avoid it

I can tell you exactly how the world will end.

In 5.5 billion years time the sun will run out of hydrogen and turn into a red giant as it starts fusing helium. It will swallow the Earth. Game over.

I'm not going to worry about it.

Re: Geniuses predict how the world will end, and how to avoid it

Belting, Billy!

Man will only cease to cause war when he no longer has any use for it.

Man has already created viruii in their laboratores i.e. AIDs virus (no, I've no proof, but it's what I believe) and probably several others which have already become endemic by using humans as guinea pigs, but come the day a plague will breach containment because of somebody's lack of concentration when monkeying around with infectious bacteria of their own making.

Spacial interference is something we couldn't do much about.

Allowing computers to become too clever (watch The Forbin Project film on You Tube). It could happen.

I've never been to any University, but I have a measured high IQ by MENSA, but it doesn't take much to figure out what the boffins have come up with by pondering, discussing and chatting about over a few years.

I've thought up that lot in the last few minutes, so it doesn't take a genius, which I'm not.

Re: Geniuses predict how the world will end, and how to avoid it

Given the scenarios, there's a fair few on this forum that would qualify to sit on that panel of experts cos we've been suggesting those very events for quite some time!

Re: Geniuses predict how the world will end, and how to avoid it

No zombies?

I just watched World War Z with Brad Pitt and let me tell you zombies are a huge threat. If the zombie virus somehow gets out - and it always does after huge natural disasters - it will be a fight to the finish.

Loads of other films back me up - Resident Evil for one.

Surprised those boffins never thought of the above .



Hey and what about the Klingons or Romulans?

Re: Geniuses predict how the world will end, and how to avoid it

I thought we'd already agreed that zombies won't be a problem because they only lurch along very slowly so we can outrun them quite easily. I'm not a Trekkie so am woefully uninformed about most of it.

Re: Geniuses predict how the world will end, and how to avoid it

You are woefully uninformed about zombies too. Just watch that trailer and see how fast some zombies can be. No way could you outrun them now. The new breed of zombies are on steroids. Think of Linford Christie with a blood lust.

Re: Geniuses predict how the world will end, and how to avoid it

then we're doomed I tell you, doomed

Re: Geniuses predict how the world will end, and how to avoid it

Well, Bill, that was a good read, don't you think.?

Couldnt help wondering the value of such a quazi quorum and also their choice of delegates, Any of us on here could have invented these sublime scientific suggestions .

Re: Geniuses predict how the world will end, and how to avoid it

In the long run, it doesn't matter what we or our distant descendants do. Even assuming we can survive the sun becoming a red giant by migrating to other planetary systems, in the long term even the galaxy will eventually either evaporate or be swallowed by the putative black hole at it's centre. In the REALLY long term all that will be left will be galactic black holes which themselves will evaporate due to 'Hawking' radiation, leaving nothing but a uniform sea of ultra low level radiation and leptons, in a universe a trillion times larger than it is now, from which no more useful 'work' can be extracted ... the 'heat death' of the universe. Entropy in a closed system (the universe in this case) can only increase. We have only about 10^1000 (10 followed by 1,000 zeros) years left. You can't beat the Second Law of Thermodynamics.