Before he passed away, Stephen Hawking warned that the world could end within the next 600 years if humanity continues on its current path.
His chilling prediction pointed out that unchecked population growth and energy consumption could turn the planet into a “giant ball of fire” by the year 2600.
Speaking at the Tencent WE Summit in November 2017, Hawking explained that the global population was doubling every 40 years, a trend he believed was unsustainable.
He 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.”
Hawking added through his computer-generated voice, “This is untenable.”
Although Hawking passed away in 2018, his warnings about climate change, global warming, and the greenhouse effect remain relevant.
He also pointed to artificial intelligence, nuclear war, and pandemics as additional threats to humanity’s survival.
Recent reports suggested that NASA had backed Hawking’s claims, though the space agency has since denied this.
A spokesperson told Newsweek, “NASA has not made this claim.”
However, they admitted that the agency continues to study global threats.
They said, “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 that address some of the areas that Hawking mentioned.”
Hawking previously told the BBC in 2016 that while the likelihood of a disaster occurring in any given year was low, the risk increased over time.
The legendary scientist said, “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.”
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