We all know that in a billion years or so,
the sun will start its transformation
into a red giant.
In other words, it will start getting bigger,
and when
it does that, the extra solar energy that
we receive on Earth will likely
dry up all the oceans and destroy most of
life on Earth.
If humanity
didn’t move to another planet, our numbers
will probably start to
dwindle and, that will likely be the end.
But don’t worry, because we don’t have
to wait 1 billion years for
death to happen.
Consider the Doomsday Argument.
First proposed by Brandon Carter, the Doomsday
argument is
basically an argument that claims to predict
the number of
future members of the human species based
on the total number
humans born so far.
As of today, the argument says that the humans
alive right now are probably at the halfway
point on the entire
human history timeline.
In other words, suppose that 10 trillion humans
will have ever
lived, and we have given them all a number
from 1 to 10 trillion.
If we randomly picked a human today, chances
are that he or she
will not be among the first 10% of humans
that ever have lived,
and that his or her number will not be a number
from 1 to 1 trillion.
In other words, the person we picked will
more likely have a number
from 7 to 10 trillion.
Applying Leslie’s figure and Copernican’s
Principle, there is a
95% chance that the total number of humans
that ever will live
is around 1.2 trillion.
Assuming that the world population stabilizes
at 10 billion with a life expectancy of 80
years, it can be estimated
that the remaining 1,140 billion humans will
be born in 9,120 years.
Anyways, the main point is that 1.2 trillion
humans is likely the
maximum total number of humans that will exist.
This is also saying
that humanity will likely end in 10,000 years.
And if you don’t think
the human race will ever go extinct, just
look at the dinosaurs.
The
dinosaurs ruled the Earth for over around
150 million years.
Then
they either died off or evolved into other
species.
Who’s to say that
a meteor won’t hit Earth and do the same
to us?
