Four scenarios 'end of the world' proposed by Stephen Hawking

Progress in science and technology, according to the physical, can create new ways to result in a disaster of the planet Earth

Humanity is in danger of being extinguished thanks to hazards created by herself, according to the British physicist Stephen Hawking.

Hawking was the guest of this year's Reith Lectures calls - event since 1948 invites public projection people to an annual series of lectures Hansen said there are four possible scenarios for an end of the world created by humanity itself. And progress in science and technology will create "new forms of things going wrong."

"Although they lower the chances of a disaster on planet Earth in any given year, it builds up over time and becomes a near certainty for the next thousand or ten thousand years," said Hawking. He has long warned before about the dangers that humanity was created.

Below are four possible reasons for an end of the world, in the opinion of the scientist.

Artificial intelligence

Stephen Hawking believes that efforts to create machines that think themselves are a threat to our existence. "The development of a total artificial intelligence (AI) can lead to the end of the human race," said physicist in 2014.

According to him, the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have proven to be useful, but Hawking fears the consequences of creating something that can equal or even surpass humans. "(The machines) would evolve by themselves, redo the project itself to an ever greater speed. Human, which are limited by a slow biological evolution, could not compete and would be replaced."


Hawking is not the only one who fears artificial intelligence. The American cinema has treated the issue as a threat in several films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Bladerunner (1982), the film series The Terminator, then

Nuclear war

If the machines do not kill us, we can do it on their own. "The human failure that I most like to correct is aggression," Hawking said in a lecture at the Museum of Science in London in 2015.

"It may have been an advantage for survival at the time of the cavemen to get more food, territory or partners for reproduction but now is a threat that can destroy us all."

Weapons of mass destruction today are capable of ending life on Earth, and the proliferation of nuclear arsenals is a major concern worldwide. "A big world war would mean the end of civilization and perhaps the end of the human race," Hawking said.

Virus created by genetic engineering

And nuclear weapons can not be the worst threat among the inventions of mankind. In 2001, Hawking told the British newspaper "Daily Telegraph" that the human race faces the prospect of being wiped out by a virus created by herself.

"In the long run, I am more concerned with biology. Nuclear weapons need large facilities, but genetic engineering can be done in a small laboratory. You can not regulate every laboratory in the world. The danger is that, whether by accident or something planned, we create a virus that can destroy us, "said the scientist as saying.

"I do not think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we are spreading through space. There are many accidents that can affect life on a single planet." Again, such fears have been portrayed by Hollywood. Movies like 12 Monkeys, I Am Legend and the Resident Evil series are just a few that show a scenario in which viruses man-made destroy society.

Global warming

Stephen Hawking describes an apocalyptic futuristic setting in the documentary The Last Time, 2007.

"One of the most serious consequences of our actions is global warming caused by the emission of rising carbon dioxide levels from burning fossil fuels. The danger is that increasing temperature from becoming (a process) self-sustaining, if that is no longer the case. " "Droughts and devastation of forests are reducing the amount of CO2 that is recycled in the atmosphere," he said.

"In addition, the melting of polar ice caps will reduce the amount of reflected solar energy back into space and so increase the temperature even more. We do not know whether global warming will stop, but the worst case scenario is that the Earth becomes on a planet like Venus, with a 250 degree surface temperature and sulfuric acid rain. " "The human race can not survive in these conditions," he added.