Back in 1960, a group of researchers developed an equation to calculate when the world would end, and according to them we all have 308 days left to live.
The pessimistic scientists from the University of Illinois pinned down Friday 13 November for the end of days, and they had a complex formula to back up their grim tidings.
While Baba Vanga reckoned a war with Mars would spell the end of Earth and Nostradamus predicted an asteroid would send the planet into a fiery inferno, the scientists believed something else would spell our end.
Heinz von Foerster, Patricia M. Mora, and Lawrence W. Amiot wrote in their study: "Thus, we may conclude with considerable confidence that the principle of 'adequate technology', which proved to be correct for over 100 generations, will hold for at least three more.
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"Fortunately, there is no need to strain the theory by undue further extrapolation, because and here the pessimists erred again our great-great-grandchildren will not starve to death. They will be squeezed to death."
The researchers looked at how the world’s population had grown over the last 2,000 years and noticed the growth kept going up.
Back then, the global population had almost doubled within 60 years, going from 1.6 billion in 1900 to three billion in 1960, and this was in spite of the devastation caused by two world wars.
They predicted that while advancements in technology had so far managed to sustain the growing population, in three generations time this would no longer be the case.
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The researchers wrote that 'it is easy to see that increased density may in many cases reduce the probability of survival for an individual element', suggesting continued population growth could lead humans to 'struggle for existence in a finite environment'.
So when they created a formula to map out the way the population was growing at an ever increasing rate, the maths showed the population would reach infinity on Friday, 13 November, 2026.
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?
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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.
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Even though that might be good news for your tan, the results from 400,000 computer simulations predicted that our planet will become unlivable in the year 1,000,002,021.
The surface of the Earth will become so hot that even the most resilient microorganisms won't make it.
At that stage, the oceans will have evaporated, the atmosphere will have thinned, and surface temperatures will make life impossible.
Humanity, meanwhile, is unlikely to make it anywhere near that far.
Anish Vij