12 Ways the World Could (Really) End in 2012
Forget the Mayan nonsense. Goofy prophecies and Mesoamerican calendars won't bring about the end of civilization, but there are at least a dozen scientifically valid ways the apocalypse could arrive before 2012 is out.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/natural-disasters/12-ways-the-world-could-really-end-in-2012#slide-1By Jeff Wise
Predicting the end of the world is both a
sure bet and a fool's errand. Eventually, the total destruction of
civilization, the human race, and, indeed, the world is a near
certainty. The tricky part about predicting the apocalypse is the
timing. But that hasn't stopped people from forecasting impending doom
throughout human history. Holy men, ancient astronomers, and even modern
computer scientists have all occasionally read the leaves in their
occupational cups of tea and concluded that the end is nigh. And,
without exception, they have all been wrong.
But maybe this year is going to be different. On Dec. 21, 2012, the Mayan calendar will reach the end of a 394-year cycle called a b'ak'tun, which has sent end-time aficionados into a frenzy. (About the movie based on the 2012 theory, the less said the better.) Archaeologists laugh off that doomsday scenario, explaining that the Mayan calendar cycle is no more momentous than our own calendar ticking over from 1999 to 2000. So that's a relief.
Still, just because the Mayans didn't predict the end of the world this particular year doesn't mean our safety is assured. There are plenty of other risks to life on earth that scientists do take seriously. These might range from disasters that threaten millions or billions of people to an all-out "extinction-level event" that wipes out the majority of life on the planet.
Could one of these global bummers strike us this year? Not likely. But not completely impossible. To understand the infinitesimally small—but nonetheless real—risk of planetary disaster, it helps to travel back in time. Because such events have happened before. And the results weren't pretty.
To see the evidence, let's take a trip. Start with a visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. On the fourth floor, just inside the entrance to the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, you'll find a chunk of Montana dirt with dark and light bands layered like Neapolitan ice cream. Not very exciting compared to the huge creatures on display nearby. But one thin, grayish-beige layer might explain what exterminated these great beasts: It's the impact residue of a 6-mile-wide asteroid that struck the Yucatán 65 million years ago. "In its aftermath we see extinctions of everything from single-celled organisms to the largest dinosaurs," says Mark Norell, chairman of the museum's paleontology division. Could another one seal our own fate? Or could some other extraterrestrial catastrophe bring us death from above?
Or maybe it could come from below. Twenty-two hundred miles west, in Yellowstone National Park, one of America's most popular tourist attractions, is another ominous harbinger of destruction. About once every hour, the pool around the Old Faithful geyser explodes in a fountain of spray 145 feet tall. It's a cool effect, until you consider what powers it: geothermal energy radiating up from a subterranean plug of magma. Every 500,000 years or so, the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts and rains lava and ash for hundreds of miles. An eruption 250 million years ago in Siberia may have released enough carbon into the atmosphere to cause the largest mass extinction in earth's history, the Permian-Triassic, which wiped out 96 percent of all sea life.
In the cruelest of ironies, the gravest threat to human life on earth may be other life on earth—the microbial kind. Let's turn our tour of all things apocalyptic to the Netherlands, where virologist Ron Fouchier at the Erasmus Medical Center recently synthesized an airborne version of the H5N1 avian flu. The lethality and frequent mutations of H5N1 make it a serious pandemic threat. The last big influenza pandemic, the Spanish flu of 1918, is estimated to have killed more than five times as many people as World War I. The possibility of a naturally occurring global outbreak is ever present, but the threat from labs is becoming more frightening. "The cost of synthesizing a new organism goes down every year," says Dr. Ali Khan, head of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "A bad guy could make his own smallpox."
Although imminent destruction seems all around us, the probability of extinction in any one year is vanishingly small. Our long-term prognosis, however, is far darker. Very few species survive through the eons like the alligator and the coelacanth. "The safe bet is that we won't make it, because 99.9 percent of things don't," says Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., an asteroid- and comet-tracking organization.
We've got some time, though. On average, vertebrate species stick around 4 to 6 million years, and modern humans are only about 200,000 years old. And we're not your typical vertebrates. Our science and technology might ultimately migrate off this little planet altogether. So maybe we're just getting started.
But maybe this year is going to be different. On Dec. 21, 2012, the Mayan calendar will reach the end of a 394-year cycle called a b'ak'tun, which has sent end-time aficionados into a frenzy. (About the movie based on the 2012 theory, the less said the better.) Archaeologists laugh off that doomsday scenario, explaining that the Mayan calendar cycle is no more momentous than our own calendar ticking over from 1999 to 2000. So that's a relief.
Still, just because the Mayans didn't predict the end of the world this particular year doesn't mean our safety is assured. There are plenty of other risks to life on earth that scientists do take seriously. These might range from disasters that threaten millions or billions of people to an all-out "extinction-level event" that wipes out the majority of life on the planet.
Could one of these global bummers strike us this year? Not likely. But not completely impossible. To understand the infinitesimally small—but nonetheless real—risk of planetary disaster, it helps to travel back in time. Because such events have happened before. And the results weren't pretty.
To see the evidence, let's take a trip. Start with a visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. On the fourth floor, just inside the entrance to the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, you'll find a chunk of Montana dirt with dark and light bands layered like Neapolitan ice cream. Not very exciting compared to the huge creatures on display nearby. But one thin, grayish-beige layer might explain what exterminated these great beasts: It's the impact residue of a 6-mile-wide asteroid that struck the Yucatán 65 million years ago. "In its aftermath we see extinctions of everything from single-celled organisms to the largest dinosaurs," says Mark Norell, chairman of the museum's paleontology division. Could another one seal our own fate? Or could some other extraterrestrial catastrophe bring us death from above?
Or maybe it could come from below. Twenty-two hundred miles west, in Yellowstone National Park, one of America's most popular tourist attractions, is another ominous harbinger of destruction. About once every hour, the pool around the Old Faithful geyser explodes in a fountain of spray 145 feet tall. It's a cool effect, until you consider what powers it: geothermal energy radiating up from a subterranean plug of magma. Every 500,000 years or so, the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts and rains lava and ash for hundreds of miles. An eruption 250 million years ago in Siberia may have released enough carbon into the atmosphere to cause the largest mass extinction in earth's history, the Permian-Triassic, which wiped out 96 percent of all sea life.
In the cruelest of ironies, the gravest threat to human life on earth may be other life on earth—the microbial kind. Let's turn our tour of all things apocalyptic to the Netherlands, where virologist Ron Fouchier at the Erasmus Medical Center recently synthesized an airborne version of the H5N1 avian flu. The lethality and frequent mutations of H5N1 make it a serious pandemic threat. The last big influenza pandemic, the Spanish flu of 1918, is estimated to have killed more than five times as many people as World War I. The possibility of a naturally occurring global outbreak is ever present, but the threat from labs is becoming more frightening. "The cost of synthesizing a new organism goes down every year," says Dr. Ali Khan, head of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "A bad guy could make his own smallpox."
Although imminent destruction seems all around us, the probability of extinction in any one year is vanishingly small. Our long-term prognosis, however, is far darker. Very few species survive through the eons like the alligator and the coelacanth. "The safe bet is that we won't make it, because 99.9 percent of things don't," says Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., an asteroid- and comet-tracking organization.
We've got some time, though. On average, vertebrate species stick around 4 to 6 million years, and modern humans are only about 200,000 years old. And we're not your typical vertebrates. Our science and technology might ultimately migrate off this little planet altogether. So maybe we're just getting started.
Asteroid Impact
Space
objects strike the Earth all the time, but extinction-level impacts
occur only once every 100 million years. After the spectacular collision
of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet with Jupiter (and a host of
asteroid-disaster flicks) in the 1990s, NASA set out to map all large
near-earth objects. But it appears that there are far fewer potential
catastrophes in earth's neighborhood than once thought. "A
civilization-killing asteroid would have to be a mile across," says
Spahr of the Minor Planet Center. (The space rock that ended the
dinosaur era is estimated to have been six times that size.) "There just
aren't any asteroids that size out there," he says.
There is, however, a large population of as-yet-undiscovered objects several hundred yards across. One that we do know about, a 300-yard-wide asteroid called 99942 Apophis, will pass within the orbits of earth satellites in 2029 and could one day strike the planet. "Worst-case scenario?" Spahr says. "You hit Los Angeles, kill millions of people, and shut down the entire West Coast."
There is, however, a large population of as-yet-undiscovered objects several hundred yards across. One that we do know about, a 300-yard-wide asteroid called 99942 Apophis, will pass within the orbits of earth satellites in 2029 and could one day strike the planet. "Worst-case scenario?" Spahr says. "You hit Los Angeles, kill millions of people, and shut down the entire West Coast."
Pandemic
For
a disease to be globally disruptive, it must undergo a flare-up of
contagiousness and lethality—like the 1918 influenza pandemic, which in
the course of two and half years killed 50 to 80 million people. If the
next influenza pandemic is as bad as 1918's, the equivalent toll would
be 210 million. "Knocking off that many people at once would disrupt
civilization," the CDC's Khan says. He adds, however, that in the past
century medical science has developed powerful weapons against disease.
"We're an intelligent species," he says. "We can fight back."
But what if that intelligence were turned against us? Thanks to advances in biotechnology, it will become increasingly possible to custom-tailor a pathogen's lethality. "We're on the cusp of what could be a very frightening time," says Charles P. Blair, director of the Terrorism Analysis Project at the Federation of American Scientists. "I think in the very near future you're talking about a potential extinction event."
But what if that intelligence were turned against us? Thanks to advances in biotechnology, it will become increasingly possible to custom-tailor a pathogen's lethality. "We're on the cusp of what could be a very frightening time," says Charles P. Blair, director of the Terrorism Analysis Project at the Federation of American Scientists. "I think in the very near future you're talking about a potential extinction event."
The Machines Take Over
Moore's
Law—The observation that computer chips get twice as powerful every two
years—implies that, eventually, artificial brains will eclipse the
human brain. The big question is, what will the artificial
superintelligence of the future choose to do with its gifts?
"The risk is not so much a Terminator scenario, where you get a supercomputer that dislikes humans," says Anders Sandberg, a researcher and futurist at the Oxford Martin School's Future of Humanity Institute in England. "A malign neglect would be a bigger problem. You get something that's very intelligent but has motivations that are completely nonhuman. [The computer] might not really care about anything that we care about, but since it's smarter, it's going to get what it wants."
"The risk is not so much a Terminator scenario, where you get a supercomputer that dislikes humans," says Anders Sandberg, a researcher and futurist at the Oxford Martin School's Future of Humanity Institute in England. "A malign neglect would be a bigger problem. You get something that's very intelligent but has motivations that are completely nonhuman. [The computer] might not really care about anything that we care about, but since it's smarter, it's going to get what it wants."
Moore's
Law—The observation that computer chips get twice as powerful every two
years—implies that, eventually, artificial brains will eclipse the
human brain. The big question is, what will the artificial
superintelligence of the future choose to do with its gifts?
"The risk is not so much a Terminator scenario, where you get a supercomputer that dislikes humans," says Anders Sandberg, a researcher and futurist at the Oxford Martin School's Future of Humanity Institute in England. "A malign neglect would be a bigger problem. You get something that's very intelligent but has motivations that are completely nonhuman. [The computer] might not really care about anything that we care about, but since it's smarter, it's going to get what it wants."
"The risk is not so much a Terminator scenario, where you get a supercomputer that dislikes humans," says Anders Sandberg, a researcher and futurist at the Oxford Martin School's Future of Humanity Institute in England. "A malign neglect would be a bigger problem. You get something that's very intelligent but has motivations that are completely nonhuman. [The computer] might not really care about anything that we care about, but since it's smarter, it's going to get what it wants."
Snowball Earth
Right
now people worry about global warming, but fallout from a nuclear war
or a supervolcano could put enough sunlight-blocking dust in the air to
cause the opposite problem: a deep plunge in surface temperatures. If
the earth stayed cool long enough, a worse catastrophe could ensue.
Back in the '60s, climate modelers realized that if the earth were covered in enough ice, most of the incoming solar radiation would be reflected back into space and the planet would settle into a stable state at about minus 50 degrees F. Then, in 1992, CalTech geobiologist Joseph Kirschvink proposed that the earth had once spent long stretches of time almost entirely frozen over, leaving evidence of glacial deposits in the tropics. Life clung on in a few sanctuaries heated by volcanic springs.
Could it happen again? "It's not something you'd need to worry about next year, or the next hundred years," Kirschvink says. "Even if the climate became very cold, it would take a long time for glaciers to build up."
Back in the '60s, climate modelers realized that if the earth were covered in enough ice, most of the incoming solar radiation would be reflected back into space and the planet would settle into a stable state at about minus 50 degrees F. Then, in 1992, CalTech geobiologist Joseph Kirschvink proposed that the earth had once spent long stretches of time almost entirely frozen over, leaving evidence of glacial deposits in the tropics. Life clung on in a few sanctuaries heated by volcanic springs.
Could it happen again? "It's not something you'd need to worry about next year, or the next hundred years," Kirschvink says. "Even if the climate became very cold, it would take a long time for glaciers to build up."
Ocean Acidification
Ten million years after the dinosaurs died, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere soared. The oceans absorbed CO2 and became increasingly acidic, triggering a wave of extinction that swept the planet.
Today, carbon dioxide levels are again soaring—but this time, they're rising 10 times faster. Earth scientist Andy Ridgwell of the University of Bristol in England has modeled the effects of rising CO2 levels and says the damage could be most visible in coral reefs. Not only would reef destruction result in a loss of habitat for an estimated 25 percent of marine life, it could also expose many coastal cities to greater storm and wave damage. "If [the reefs] vanish, or largely vanish, that will be a real economic, social, and environmental catastrophe," Ridgwell says.
Nevertheless, it doesn't seem as if acidification is an immediate threat to human life. It would take a severe toll on deep-water species of plankton, but it would largely spare the world's major commercial fisheries. "A lot of things that are at risk of extinction we might not even notice," Ridgwell says.
Today, carbon dioxide levels are again soaring—but this time, they're rising 10 times faster. Earth scientist Andy Ridgwell of the University of Bristol in England has modeled the effects of rising CO2 levels and says the damage could be most visible in coral reefs. Not only would reef destruction result in a loss of habitat for an estimated 25 percent of marine life, it could also expose many coastal cities to greater storm and wave damage. "If [the reefs] vanish, or largely vanish, that will be a real economic, social, and environmental catastrophe," Ridgwell says.
Nevertheless, it doesn't seem as if acidification is an immediate threat to human life. It would take a severe toll on deep-water species of plankton, but it would largely spare the world's major commercial fisheries. "A lot of things that are at risk of extinction we might not even notice," Ridgwell says.
Solar Storm
Late
last year a major solar storm launched a wave of charged particles
through the solar system at 4 million mph, setting the stage for a
display of northern lights that could be seen as far south as Arkansas.
But while delightful to the eye, such a storm could someday herald
disaster.
The earth's magnetic field prevents the sun's deadly particles from striking the surface. The motion of those particles, however, can induce strong currents on the ground. During the worst solar storm ever recorded, in 1859, the currents were so intense that telegraph lines burst into flames. "If we had a storm like that today, it would be possibly quite catastrophic," says Jeffrey Love, a geomagnetic researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Months without electricity could cause losses of trillions of dollars and basically wreck the economy."
The earth's magnetic field prevents the sun's deadly particles from striking the surface. The motion of those particles, however, can induce strong currents on the ground. During the worst solar storm ever recorded, in 1859, the currents were so intense that telegraph lines burst into flames. "If we had a storm like that today, it would be possibly quite catastrophic," says Jeffrey Love, a geomagnetic researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Months without electricity could cause losses of trillions of dollars and basically wreck the economy."
Supervolcano
Two
million years ago, a massive volcanic eruption near what is today
Yellowstone National Park shot 600 cubic miles of dust and ash into the
atmosphere—2400 times more than Mount St. Helens did in 1980. If such an
eruption happened today, "it would greatly interrupt business as usual
around the planet," says Jake Lowenstern, a geologist with the U.S.
Geological Survey and scientist-in-charge at the Yellowstone Volcano
Observatory. Aside from the toll in human lives in the vicinity of the
eruption, he says, "global air traffic would be interrupted for months,
if not years."
Since that ancient blast, massive eruptions have been taking place every 600,000 years or so—and the last one was 640,000 years ago. On the bright side, the intervals between the Yellowstone supervolcano's eruptions are extremely erratic. Statistically speaking, it's very unlikely to blow in 2012, or even within the next millennium.
Since that ancient blast, massive eruptions have been taking place every 600,000 years or so—and the last one was 640,000 years ago. On the bright side, the intervals between the Yellowstone supervolcano's eruptions are extremely erratic. Statistically speaking, it's very unlikely to blow in 2012, or even within the next millennium.
Geomagnetic Reversal
Right
now, the magnetic North Pole is up near the rotational north pole, but
this hasn't always been the case. Throughout the earth's history, the
north and south magnetic poles have swapped places, a phenomenon known
as geomagnetic reversal. It happens irregularly, every 100,000 to 1
million years, and the last time they flipped was 780,000 years ago. So
maybe we're due. Geophysicist J. Marvin Herndon has suggested that the
reversal could cause the geomagnetic field to temporarily collapse,
disrupting everything from power grids to gas pipelines to
communications satellites.
But there's also no need for immediate panic. While a flip would occur quickly on a geological time scale, it is far longer in human terms, between 1000 and 10,000 years. "Whether it's going to do us harm is an academic question," says Jeffrey Love of the U.S. Geological Survey, "because it's not going to happen tomorrow, and it's not going to happen in our lifetime."
But there's also no need for immediate panic. While a flip would occur quickly on a geological time scale, it is far longer in human terms, between 1000 and 10,000 years. "Whether it's going to do us harm is an academic question," says Jeffrey Love of the U.S. Geological Survey, "because it's not going to happen tomorrow, and it's not going to happen in our lifetime."
Nuclear War
On
Sept. 26, 1983, a satellite-monitoring unit at a secret facility near
Moscow received a warning: Five nuclear missiles had launched from a
base in the U.S. Luckily, the unit's officer, Stanislav Yevgrafovich
Petrov, was skeptical about the reliability of newly installed
equipment, and he chose to wait rather than immediately pass along an
alarm that might trigger a nuclear war. His judgment may have saved
millions of lives.
Nuclear tensions have subsided considerably since the end of the Cold War. But the threat remains. More countries than ever have the bomb, and terrorist groups and rogue states remain a worry. A study published in 2008 by the journal Physics Today suggests that a regional war involving as few as 100 bombs could cause a nuclear winter, resulting in the lowest temperatures in 1000 years, while an exchange involving thousands of weapons would, the study concluded, "likely eliminate the majority of the human population."
"Nuclear war is the near-term risk that people tend to forget about," says Sandberg of Oxford Martin. "If you think historically, we've probably been very lucky."
Nuclear tensions have subsided considerably since the end of the Cold War. But the threat remains. More countries than ever have the bomb, and terrorist groups and rogue states remain a worry. A study published in 2008 by the journal Physics Today suggests that a regional war involving as few as 100 bombs could cause a nuclear winter, resulting in the lowest temperatures in 1000 years, while an exchange involving thousands of weapons would, the study concluded, "likely eliminate the majority of the human population."
"Nuclear war is the near-term risk that people tend to forget about," says Sandberg of Oxford Martin. "If you think historically, we've probably been very lucky."
Artificial Black Hole
In
1945, a physicist working on the first atomic bomb raised a disturbing
possibility: What if the energy released by the fissioning nuclei
ignited the atmosphere and wiped out life on earth? Obviously, that
didn't happen, and mankind survived its entry into the nuclear age.
But the notion that physicists could unwittingly trigger a world-ending catastrophe has not gone away. In 1999, as the Brookhaven National Laboratory prepared to fire up its Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a Hawaiian man named Walter Wagner filed a lawsuit to have the facility shut down. He claimed that the collision of high-energy subatomic particles could spawn tiny black holes that could subsequently grow until they swallowed the earth.
In more than a decade of operation the RHIC has not produced a black hole, but Wagner is currently warning of the same danger for Europe's Large Hadron Collider, which is generating yet higher energies.
Mainstream physicists dismiss the threat. "This danger simply does not exist," says Brookhaven Lab physicist Dmitri Kharzeev. "These energies are high in human terms, but the cosmic rays that naturally occur in space are much more energetic. If high-energy particle collision could produce black holes, one would have swallowed us a long time ago."
But the notion that physicists could unwittingly trigger a world-ending catastrophe has not gone away. In 1999, as the Brookhaven National Laboratory prepared to fire up its Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a Hawaiian man named Walter Wagner filed a lawsuit to have the facility shut down. He claimed that the collision of high-energy subatomic particles could spawn tiny black holes that could subsequently grow until they swallowed the earth.
In more than a decade of operation the RHIC has not produced a black hole, but Wagner is currently warning of the same danger for Europe's Large Hadron Collider, which is generating yet higher energies.
Mainstream physicists dismiss the threat. "This danger simply does not exist," says Brookhaven Lab physicist Dmitri Kharzeev. "These energies are high in human terms, but the cosmic rays that naturally occur in space are much more energetic. If high-energy particle collision could produce black holes, one would have swallowed us a long time ago."
The X Factor
Many
of the threats here were inconceivable a century ago. Are there other
dangers lurking beyond the fringes of our understanding? Some scientists
working on the cutting edge of cosmology have suggested ideas that
sound bizarre but one day may be accepted as real.
One is the notion of "vacuum decay," the idea that space itself might shift to a different quantum state, vaporizing everything in it. Another is the theory that structures existing beyond the visible dimensions, called branes, could collide, with equally apocalyptic results.
To astronomer Derek Fox, this kind of thinking is more thought-provoking than disturbing. "Yes, it's possible that there are things out there in the universe that could be a threat to life on earth that we don't know about yet," Fox says. "But I don't think these are the things that we need to be most worried about. Every night astronomers are looking into the universe, looking back 10 billion or more years into the past, and they've never seen any signs of these sorts of things."
One is the notion of "vacuum decay," the idea that space itself might shift to a different quantum state, vaporizing everything in it. Another is the theory that structures existing beyond the visible dimensions, called branes, could collide, with equally apocalyptic results.
To astronomer Derek Fox, this kind of thinking is more thought-provoking than disturbing. "Yes, it's possible that there are things out there in the universe that could be a threat to life on earth that we don't know about yet," Fox says. "But I don't think these are the things that we need to be most worried about. Every night astronomers are looking into the universe, looking back 10 billion or more years into the past, and they've never seen any signs of these sorts of things."
No comments:
Post a Comment