Stephen Hawking made a bold prediction about the end of the world, suggesting that certain human actions could accelerate the process.
The late Stephen Hawking believed that the end of the world might come sooner than we expect.
It’s a sobering thought to start your day with, but here we are.
Hawking, one of the most renowned scientists in history, made a chilling statement about humanity’s future, warning that our current path could lead to disaster.
While Hawking was known for his bold predictions about the future, this one stands out—he even gave us a specific year to watch for.
The renowned physicist and author of The Theory of Everything, Stephen Hawking, predicted a grim fate for humanity in less than 600 years.
Before his death in 2018, he warned that factors like rapid population growth and escalating energy consumption could turn Earth into a “giant ball of fire”—unless significant changes were made.
Hawking shared this ominous forecast at the Tencent WE Summit in November 2017, where he revealed that the world’s population was doubling every 40 years at that time, a trend that could have disastrous consequences for our planet.
Hawking explained, “This exponential growth cannot continue into the next millennium. By the year 2600, the world’s population would be standing shoulder to shoulder, and the electricity consumption would make the Earth glow red-hot. This is untenable.”
Delivered through his computer-generated voice, the warning was both urgent and dire.
Recently, reports surfaced suggesting that NASA had supported Hawking’s grim predictions. However, NASA quickly denied these claims, with a spokesperson telling Newsweek, “NASA has not made this claim.”
The space agency has expressed concern about global threats to humanity, emphasizing, “For more than 50 years, NASA has studied our home planet, providing information to directly benefit humanity and producing observations that can only be gathered in space. These address some of the areas that Hawking mentioned.”
So, is it too late to change our course?
Hawking addressed this concern in a 2016 interview with the BBC, explaining, “Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or 10,000 years.”
Hawking attributed his dire prediction to global warming, climate change, and the greenhouse effect as the primary factors that could lead to Earth’s demise.
In the years since, it seems humanity has made little progress in addressing these issues.
The end of the world may now be closer than originally thought, as Hawking also pointed to nuclear war, artificial intelligence, and pandemics as existential threats.
With two of those threats already a reality, the final one remains a growing concern.
