Video listmaker Alltime10s gets its Armageddon on with "10 Things That Could Wipe Out Life On Earth." From that supervolcano in Yellowstone to artificial intelligence going rogue -- not to mention pollution, gamma rays and comet clouds, among other potential catastrophes -- it looks like we're all pretty much doomed.
Can science offer any reassurance? Alas, not so much. As Williams College astronomy professor Jay M. Pasachoff said about the video in an email toHuffPost Science:
The things listed, none of which are impossible, range widely from things we can control (like gamma-ray bursts, and one would have to be pretty damn close to affect us, though the video doesn't make clear that scientific satellites already detect one every day or so) to global warming, which we can affect and which we had better control.
Not that we haven't already dodged a few big bullets.
Last fall, Ukrainian astronomers asserted that a giant asteroid could hit Earth in 2032, but NASA put the chances of "2013 TV135" missing us at 99.998 percent. And the so-called Mayan Apocalypse that had been predicted for Dec. 21, 2012 never materialized.
Feel better now?
(Hat tip, Laughing Squid)
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