Readers Wonder: How Will It All End?

with a whimper

The world? Or Life on earth? or just us? The world will probably end when the sun expires and eventually turns into a black whole and consumes the earth... or something like that, i forget how it goes :D

One of two possible scenarios XD

A> Sol's impolosion or a cosmic object either colliding with earth and destorying it or knocking it out of coherant orbit.

B> I think we will eventually be using anti-matter/matter anihilation as a form of energy generation. If a reacter suffers a containment breakdown, any anti-matter will violently react with any matter it comes into contact with and both will be destroyed in a flash of dramatic energy release.

I, truthfully, think the true threat is within ourselves, rather than some rock in space. if we survive the twenty-first century, then I think we should be ok.
Dustin H

Biological disease, either directly or indirectly created by man. In other words, a method of biological warfare that gets out of control or a "super bug" that is an airborne threat, spreads rapidly, is fatal within a short time, and has no cure.

I place my entire belief off the bible. It clearly states that the world will not end in water. But that still allows famine, fire (asteroids, volcanoes etc...)and other natural disasters.

TheRedFox

Zengrath, when our sun dies, it will not have enough mass to create a blackhole.

Householdutensils, if there was a cosmic object that was large enough to knock the Earth out of a coherent orbit, it would also be large enough to destroy it, so we wouldn't really have to worry about the orbit part.

And as for my guess, the LHC has yet to collide any actual particles, so we still have a slight chance of dying from it.

Biological disease, either directly or indirectly created by man. In other words, a method of biological warfare that gets out of control or a "super bug" that is an airborne threat, spreads rapidly, is fatal within a short time, and has no cure.

once again, going with dusty.
Our biggest threat is ourselves. We are damaging everything around us, without thinking twice about it. Sure, there are those who care, but 1% of the population isn't going to change much.
However, with all the 2012 buzz, I would say that behind every story, there is some truth. Mayan calendar was proven to be right numerous times, so was Nostradamus. So maybe, there really will be a big change in 2012 where the world will suffer a great change. Big Bang, Ice Age and now what follows?
- DiGGY

AlGore will be in the middle of one of his Bloviations and his head will Explode, killing us all......

Stop Al Now!!!!

10 bucks saids that absolutely nothing will happen on 2012 except the Olympics and the election of the next president.

Clearly the answer is zombies.

"All living things were born to die..." If anyone can tell me what game that line is from you (like I) have played way too many games. Back on subject, I believe in the literal resurrection of the body and spirit. The earth (like the body) was created, will die and then be resurrected. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars. So also is the resurrection of the dead, it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. And no I'm not a JW. The zombie comment was funny.

"All living things are born to die. No one can defeat me, the Vampire!!"
- Final Fantasy

Let me think... War?

War sounds bout right.
- DiGGY

I don't really know but I bet liberals will have something to do with it. ;)

I believe that you will be able to know when the end of the world is near. Just go to Luke 21:25-27 for example. It says exactly what will happen...so you'd better be ready...

Xtreme Kommander

the earth will end in a catastrophic explosion at once with mountains imploding and lakes boiling. stars will fall from the skies and cities will freeze over in dry ice. Antarctica will sink so far into the crust of the earth, lava will over flow and destroy 1/3 of the planet. the orbit of the moon will close in so close, is enters the atmosphere, setting the skies aflame. eventually the moon will hit the earth , cracking it into billions of pieces. that's how it will end (don't worry, we got til 4092!)

I am appalled by so many incoherent answers from the PopSci community based of minds interested in science.

While we cannot accurately predict future trends that will evolve, we can extend the current social, environmental and scientific trends ad infinitum to come up with the most likely way that the human race will go extinct.

As an oversimplification, let us take the biggest current issues and extend them to see what we come up with:

1. Climate change (with counter) fossil fuel independence, and the limitations of the quantity of carbon dioxide we can pump into the atmosphere imposed by a limited supply of oil.
2. Overpopulation (with counter) energy, transportation, and food infrastructure advancements
3. Nanomaterials that will enable better infrastructure and healthcare assuming the can be mass-produced this century
4. Genetics (with counter) possible threats from renegade viruses, bugs etc.
5. Individual intelligence (with counter) the lack of discernment within the herd.
6. Information saturation - the internet being able to provide all information anytime anywhere.

While I do not have hard numbers, I will assume that we will be able to
1. counter climate change before ecosystem collapse
2. curb effects of overpopulation until the time when we are able to process resources off-world
3. mass-production of carbon allotropes on the atomic scale will begin within this quarter of the century
4. threats caused by renegade bugs will be countered with the same technology that created them (* see below)
5. The educational system is refined to promote logical reasoning as opposed to blind specialization (* see below)
6. provide information anywhere anytime.

Now that we knocked off the less likely threats to our survival, take a look at points 4 and 5. Ironically enough, it's the same problems that have been plaguing humanity for thousands of years that will get us in the end.

* based on this, the most likely imminent threat to our species is either disease or stupid people being fooled by clever jerks into destroying themselves. So there you have it - we're most likely to die of war or disease, the same two threats to our existence that have been around since the stone age.

However, this is a conclusion we can come to assuming all current trends remain the same, something that has never been a constant in our history.

While we can dream up fantastic ways that we will all be destroyed, they are good for sci-fi plots and not intelligent reasoning. The real answer? We have no idea, because if we did we'd try to avoid it and thus not end up going extinct in that particular way. The most likely way we will all die is by a means we haven't even thought up yet but one that someone can think up at any given moment, and that's a scary thought.

Over population..... re; Soylent Green.