The British Astronomer Royal foresees the medium future (up to 2050) and fears that the danger of biohackers, the renewal of the nuclear arms race and other technological advances that could cause disasters are being underestimated. The words were said at the American Physical Society conference in April 2021
From engineered plagues to cyberattacks that will bring down cities to nuclear annihilation, life on Earth may change radically, and soon. Scientists predicted Earth's fate at a press conference during the April 2021 American Physical Society (APS) meeting.
"Our earth is 4.5 billion years old. But this century is the first in which one species – the human species – can determine the fate of the biosphere,” said Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal and founder of the Center for the Study of Existential Risks at the University of Cambridge.
"Our globally connected society is exposed to unintended consequences of powerful new technologies - not just nuclear, but (even more so) biotechnology, cyber, advanced artificial intelligence, space technology," he added.
The Astronomer Royal predicts the world in 2050 and beyond
Rees thinks biohackers are an underestimated threat to humanity. In the near future, simple equipment will allow people to irreversibly modify the human genome or build a widespread flu epidemic. Like drug laws, regulations will never be able to prevent all these actions - and in a world more connected than ever, the results will spread around the world.
He also discusses other dangers: human population growth leading to the collapse of biodiversity, devastating climate change, out-of-control cybercriminals, artificial intelligence programs eroding privacy, security and freedom. But Rees is an optimist. It also suggests ways to avoid these risks and achieve a better sustainable future than the world we live in today.
"If all of us, the passengers on the 'Spaceship Earth', want to ensure that we leave it in a better condition for future generations, we must promote a wise deployment of new technologies, while minimizing the risk of epidemics, cyber threats and other global disasters," he says.
Reducing missile defense could prevent a nuclear attack
One nuclear weapon could kill millions and destroy a city instantly. Hundreds of weapons could eliminate the functioning society in the big world. A limited nuclear war could even cause climate disasters and lead to starvation of hundreds of millions of people.
Recently, Russia, China and North Korea have deployed new types of nearly unstoppable missiles.
"Missile defense is an idea that can sound appealing at first - doesn't defense sound like the right thing to do?" said Friedrich Lamb, an astrophysicist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an APS research associate on missile defense and the current chair of the APS Committee on Public Affairs Research on Missile Defense and National Security.
"But when you take into account the technical challenges and the consequences of the arms race, you can see that deploying a system designed to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles likely endangers the security of the United States," he said.
Lamb points out that Britain has decided to increase its nuclear arsenal by 44%, possibly due to Russia's new anti-missile defense system around Moscow. He sees the move as another sign that the existing restrictions on nuclear weapons are being lifted. Even missile defenses that will never actually work can accelerate the development of new nuclear weapons and increase global risk.
"What is done about nuclear weapons and missile defense by the United States and other countries affects the safety and survival of every person on the planet," he said.
to the announcement of the American Physical Society
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