NASA has acknowledged that the planet faces enormous existential dangers, precisely as Stephen Hawking foresaw. The space agency has validated the apocalyptic warnings made by the renowned physicist, who made alarming forecasts in 2018, just two weeks before his death.
Hawking's 2018 warning
In The Search for a New Earth, Hawking warned that the planet would transform into an enormous fireball by 2600 unless humanity altered its behaviour. Earlier, in 2016, he told the BBC: "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."
He attributed his frightening forecast to global warming, climate change and the greenhouse effect as the three primary culprits threatening Earth's survival. The University of Cambridge mathematician's apocalyptic warnings have now been backed by NASA.
NASA's response
While NASA hasn't specified an exact doomsday date for Earth, it has cautioned that our destruction could arrive earlier, far earlier, than expected if we fail to control our resource usage. A NASA spokesperson 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."
Sloths could face extinction by 2100 and New York might endure severe climate change damage by the century's end. Furthermore, the world's demise could occur considerably sooner than Hawking's prediction.
Prevention programmes
NASA is actively involved in prevention programmes designed to avert catastrophic events that could spell the end of civilisation. These initiatives include investigations into potential asteroid impacts and continuous research into climate change to mitigate its impact and allocate resources for Earth observation.
Hawking also identified nuclear warfare, artificial intelligence and pandemics as potential existential threats.
