While the researchers’ ‘doomsday’ reference may have been a little dramatic in hindsight, they strongly believed that population growth could not keep increasing forever and hoped that ‘at some time, somehow, something will happen that will stop this ever-faster race to self-destruction’.
As you may have noticed, in the 66 years since this study we’re no longer anxious that the end of days is on the way in November, so what’s changed?
We’ll be long gone before this happens (Getty Stock Images)
We’ll be long gone before this happens (Getty Stock Images)
Well, although the global population now stands at a whopping 8.2 billion, the rate at which it is increasing has markedly slowed down.
The UN now predicts the population will peak in just 60 years in the 2080s at 10.3 billion, and by 2100 will have fallen by around 700 million.
With the exponential growth of the population halted, largely because women are choosing to have fewer children in some of the world’s largest countries, a 2026 apocalypse is less likely.
If you perhaps want a more ‘up-to-date’ prediction, recently scientists from Toho University in Japan collaborated with NASA researchers to determine when the world will end.
According to study ‘The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere’, the fate of life on Earth is tied to the lifespan and evolution of the Sun.
