The late Stephen Hawking once predicted that the end of the world might come sooner than we think.
We've heard Baba Vanga's unnerving 2025 theories surrounding a war breakout in Europe and the year aliens will finally make their appearance on Earth. But, try as you may, you can't write off one of the world's greatest scientists of all time.
The famous physicist and author of The Theory of Everything predicted a dark end for Earth by the year 2600.
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Sure, that’s still 600 years away and far from our own time, but it’s a pretty bleak future for our home planet.
In his final years, Hawking projected that population growth and high energy demands could push Earth toward disaster, potentially turning it into a 'giant ball of fire.'
Recent reports suggested that NASA backed up the late scientist's predictions. One news article from Marca hinted NASA had 'confirmed' Hawking’s doomsday theory.
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However, the US space agency has since denied this with a spokesperson stating: "NASA has not made this claim."
Still, NASA has been vocal about potential global threats to humanity and has been continuously studying Earth's changes for decades: "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."
Back in 2016, Hawking also spoke to the BBC: "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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To protect humanity’s future, Hawking strongly supported the idea of setting up colonies beyond the scope of Earth (settle down, Elon Musk).
While it might take at least a century before these 'self-sustaining colonies in space' could survive on their own, they could one day be a backup plan for us.
His biggest worries included global warming, asteroid impacts, nuclear war, AI risks, and pandemics.
But don't go hiding in your doomsday bunker or panic buying just yet as NASA has by no means confirmed a date for the world's end.
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Besides predicting armageddon, NASA stresses that humanity still has the power to influence the severity of these impacts.
The space agency states on its website: "The severity of effects caused by climate change will depend on the path of future human activities if we can reduce emissions, we may avoid some of the worst effects."