Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is part of our lives. Thanks to it, we can perform complex tasks in a matter of seconds – which, with our brain alone, would take much longer – but also in simple uses, such as creating a list of songs according to your browsing history. These intelligent systems become increasingly complex and “intuitive”, but they are also seen as potential dangers to humanity.
Although we take more time to perform such tasks, the human mind has the advantage of learning from the context in which it is inserted, in order to develop new skills and this we call general intelligence. An AI, on the other hand, depends on being programmed by us humans, and then learning on its own. However, experts fear that these intelligent systems will reach a “more human” level — but, calm down, they do not expect a “psychopathic robot” to emerge and decimate the human population, as in the movies.
The biggest threat here is that such an intelligence system will be used by the “wrong hands” and trigger a new arms race, this time based on AI. Sooner or later, experts say these programs will get things done the same way we can, and their future, like ours, could be at the mercy of whoever is in charge of these smart tools.
the "death" of the sun
As astronomy predicts, the Earth still has 5 to 8 billion years before the Sun becomes a red giant. At the end of its “life”, the Sun will expand to roughly the orbit of Mars, thus “swallowing up” all the rocky planets — including Earth. As it loses its mass, our planet will move away from it and the immense heat will have evaporated the oceans, leaving only a desert space rock with very high temperatures.
If none of the proposed end-of-the-world theories proves true by then, humanity will need to reach a level of technology that makes it possible for life on Earth to migrate to other worlds before the Sun's "death" process begins. Will we be able to terraform and inhabit gas giant moons in the Solar System itself? Could it be that, by then, we will already be exploring, in person, planets from other star systems? Have we traveled to an "Earth 2.0" far away from here and taken humanity to prosper in another corner of the galaxy? Well, that only time will tell, but it is a fact that, one way or another, our world will come to an end - even if it may take billions of years to happen.
asteroid impact
First of all, it is important to note that Earth, so far, is not on a collision course with any really dangerous asteroids. According to NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), more than 22,800 objects over 140 meters in diameter have been found, and the orbit of none of them threatens our planet. Thanks to technology, we are now able to calculate and predict potential threats, but not all yet.
Every half a million years, the Earth is hit by an asteroid 1 km in diameter. Large collisions, with objects up to 5 kilometers away, happen at a lower frequency, once every 10 million years. It is believed that an asteroid with a diameter between 10 and 15 km was responsible for causing the extinction of 75% of the species of animals and plants - among them, the dinosaurs - at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago.
Although an asteroid with a diameter of 10 km cannot destroy the planet all at once, it would certainly trigger a series of events that would compromise life on Earth, in a "domino effect". For example, the impact at the end of the Cretaceous period would have released so many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that sunlight was blocked for years, reducing the amount of solar energy reaching the surface. With that, many species that depended on photosynthesis (and that were the base of the food chain) disappeared. And an event of this proportion can still be repeated.
Which of these ways do you most likely act?