In Oxford have calculated the probability that each year has lumanit of dying of natural causes and quite disturbing results

extinction
(Picture: Getty Images)

What is the probability that mankind becomes extinct? At most one out of 14 thousand per year, support dalluniversit Oxford. Which means that every year each of us has less chance of being struck by lightning or winning the lottery, which die during the mass unestinzione. And attention, the researchers considered only the natural causes, such as the impact of an asteroid or a super volcanic eruption. Nuclear war, environmental disasters in human signature (read climate change) and other self-destructive riots were not provided, but perhaps the answer we find out for yourself.

The researchers used a mathematical model calibrated on about 200 thousand years of the presence of our species on Earth. And to calculate how many chances there are that lumanit disappear with each passing year have considered the incidence of both previous sudden mass extinctions dictated by natural disasters (such as the impact with an asteroid or devastating volcanic eruptions, but also the explosion of a nearby star to us that there would radiate to death) and the extinction of other species of mammals more gradual, caused by climate change or the fight for survival interspecific.

The result of these complex calculations quite disturbing: scientists claim that almost certainly the likelihood that the human being becomes extinct in one year to a maximum of 14,000.

Several high when you consider that according to some estimates the probability of a person being struck by lightning in a year than 1 in 700 thousand (there are several estimates referring to the geographical location or calculated from different registers).

Extending the period of observation in all the genus Homo (therefore not only to sapiens) the probability of die out decreases up to 1 870mila per year.

An estimate a little more reassuring, except that the authors end pickled items, published in Scientific Reports, hold us (and rightly so) to emphasize that it had calculated the chances of natural extinction, and therefore the estimates are excluded anthropogenic accidents, how to burst a nuclear or biological warfare, not to mention the climate change caused by human activity.

From Wired