One of the greatest and most famous scientists of our time, Stephen Hawking, was known for his many world-changing discoveries and predictions. A particularly notable — and worrying — prediction regarded the end of our world as we know it, and it might now be closer than we think.
It’s certainly a scary topic to think about, and is definitely not a pleasant one, but let’s dive in and find out what he thought might be in store for us.
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Hawking spoke greatly of the future
The famous scientist made a lot of predictions about the future in his time, one of which was about the end of the world.
This prediction is especially well-known, because it’s quite specific — in fact, he named a year when everything would change.
The physicist believed it would happen quite soon
The author of The Theory of Everything predicted that the damning end of the world situation would take place in under 600 years.
He explained population growth and energy consumption, as well as other similar factors, could completely change the Earth into something uninhabitable.
He said it would be like fire
Although he sadly passed in 2018, the physicist believed that if they remained unchanged, these factors would turn planet Earth into a “giant ball of fire.”
It is certainly a scary thought for many of us, and a difficult image to picture.
Hawking further explained the role population played in the prediction
The physicist and former University of Cambridge mathematician spoke about his doomsday prediction at the 2017 Tencent WE Summit.
He explained that up to that point, the world population was doubling every 40 years, which to him was an alarming rate.
The mathematician gave us the year
At the summit, Hawking said that “this exponential growth cannot continue into the next millennium.”
“By the year 2600, the world’s population would be standing shoulder to shoulder, and the electricity consumption would make the Earth glow red-hot. This is untenable,” he stated.
His claims have been highly debated
Recently, it was reported that NASA backed the professor’s doomsday predictions — however, they have since denied this in a statement to Newsweek saying, “NASA has not made this claim.”
While they have not exactly backed Hawking’s claim about the world ending in 2600, NASA are still worried about humanity’s future.
NASA spoke about their work to better the planet
The space agency said, “For more than 50 years, NASA has studied our home planet, providing information to directly benefit humanity and producing observations that can only be gathered in space that address some of the areas that Hawking mentioned.”
Hawking also spoke about our chances
In talking with the BBC in 2016, the mathematician elaborated on humanity’s chances: “Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or 10,000 years.”
The prediction is based on global warming
Hawking said his prediction of the Earth’s demise comes from the projections of climate change, global warming, and the greenhouse effect.
Unfortunately, not much has changed on those fronts since his 2017 comments.
He also pointed to three other factors
Hawking also highlighted three more factors that may increase our speedrun to Earth’s end: nuclear war, artificial intelligence, and global pandemics, all of which he found to be existential threats.
Since then, we’ve seen both the rise of AI and a global pandemic…let’s hope the third never comes to pass.
