The greatest fear of the human race is extinction. That fear has been used, for example, in Hollywood, to produce movies and series with apocalyptic theories that can cause terror to the public. But translating it into real life sounds scary and a group of astronomers from the POT it has done.
Scientists rely on the theory of the Great Filteroriginally proposed in 1996 by Robin Hanson, who stated that the reason we haven’t had contact with other races is because they all died out before they had a chance to make contact with usaccording to a report published on the website of The confidential.
Now, researchers from the US space agency dusted off the theory and studied what these causes of extinction are, if they are possible against humans and what we can do to avoid them.
The possibility of human extinction
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, United States, published a Article in which they investigate not only the causes of these extinction events, but also what can we do so that they do not occur on Earth.
The report states: “The key for humanity to successfully pass through that universal filter is to identify those attributes in ourselves and neutralize them beforehand.”.
From JPL they believe that nuclear war, a pandemic, climate change, or out-of-control artificial intelligence they are the most likely events that would end our civilization. There is only one event that is not of anthropogenic origin and that it is difficult for us to avoid: the impact of an asteroid.
Deflecting an Earth-killing asteroid seems impossible, though space agencies are already training to defend against space rocks. Avoiding wars, preventing pandemics or reaching international agreements to control the development of AI seems just as complicated.
Despite these scenarios, the JPL researchers are optimistic: “History has shown that intraspecific competition and, above all, collaboration, have led us to the highest peaks of invention. And yet we prolong notions that seem to be antithetical to long-term sustainable growth.”.