The day Stephen Hawking made a grim prediction about the pandemic and the end of humanity

Two decades ago Stephen Hawking, one of the most important scientists of the last century, made a cooling prediction on the end of the world which gained relevance in early 2020 with the pandemic coronavirus. It was in 2001 during an interview with the British newspaper The telegraph, in which he predicted that it would not be a nuclear war but a viruses with very high death rates all over the planet, which would cause the extinction of the human race.

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On this occasion, the physicist and scientific popularizer, who died on March 14, 2018, revealed: “In the long term, I am more concerned with biology than with nuclear weapons”. Hawking considered that the end of humanity could be the consequence of a great pandemic, and accidental or intentional creation of a virus that destroyed life as we know it.

However, it is not only the infectious agents that worry the English scientist. The artificial intelligence (AI), the climate change and the transgenic viruses they were also on his list of potential threats to humans.

While the likelihood of a disaster occurring on planet Earth in any given year may be quite low, it builds up over time and almost a certainty in the a thousand or ten thousand years to come ”, Hawking pointed out when reporting with the newspaper mentioned.

Regarding AI, and despite the recognition of the opportunities that have arisen with advancements in this field, in 2014, the scientist warned: “The development of a full artificial intelligence could mean the end of the human race, as it might equal or even exceed it ”.

On the climate change, Hawking was concerned about the “tipping point” where the global warmingi would become something irreversible. In addition, he was worried about the decision of the former US president Donald trump that this country withdraws from the Paris Agreement. “It could push the Earth to the brink, become Venus, with a temperature of 250 degrees and it rains sulfuric acid”, stressed the physicist.

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Another of the things that bothered him was the aliens, and in this sense Hawking warned about attempts to contact an extraterrestrial civilization. In 2010 he said Discovery chain than aliens they could attack the Earth in search of resources. “If they visit us, the outcome would be very similar to the landing of Christopher Columbus in America, which did not work well for Native Americans. Just look at yourself to see how intelligent life could become something that we would not like to find “, full.