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Topics: Science, World News
Joe Harker
A scientist once revealed the exact date he thought the world would end as he predicted that future generations would be 'squeezed to death' on a specific day next year.
There are some people who seem obsessed with the end of the world to the point that they're preparing for it.
Some of these folks are taking practical measures in case society should collapse, while others think the nature of the end of the world means they'll be going on to a better place and leaving everyone behind.
Recently, a number of people sold their homes, possessions and started getting ready for the end of the world in the form of the 'rapture', which they thought would be coming either today (24 September) or yesterday (23 September).
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However, the end of the world either failed to materialise or those hailing its imminent arrival weren't quite such good Christians as they thought themselves, and this latest purported 'end of the world' joins the myriad other predictions of doom which have been and gone with neither bang nor whimper.
However, there's another prediction for the end of the world which claims we haven't yet reached the exact date, though we're getting closer as it's meant to be next year.
In 1960, Austrian scientist Heinz von Foerster had a study published which claimed to contain the 'doomsday equation' which would pinpoint the moment humanity went extinct and the world would end, or our existence in it at least.
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He did this by predicting rates of population growth, assuming we weren't wiped out by a disaster, whether natural or man-made, with an indication that in the coming decades there would be billions more humans to put a strain on the planet's ability to sustain them.
"Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve to death," the scientist said of his claims, "They will be squeezed to death."
von Foerster predicted that the world would end when it reached '2026.9', otherwise known as 13 November 2026.
He reckoned that this was the time 'the clever population annihilates itself' as there are so many people that we will eventually reach infinite levels of humanity.
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On that day, the human population will hit the 'demographic singularity' and go from its highest level to zilch.
That all sounds quite gloomy, though we're just over a year out from his prediction and the idea that there will basically be infinite humans leaving no space for each other doesn't seem like it's quite here.
While his predictions about the end of the world may be off, his 'doomsday equation' on population growth managed to be pretty darn accurate at tracking a rise in global population throughout the 20th century.