Religious fanatics consider the beginning and end of the world to be their exclusive domain, which endlessly frustrates secularists and some scientists. When someone suggested to British evolutionary biologist and strident atheist Richard Dawkins that he pose questions about the big bang to a chaplain, Dawkins responded, “Why not the gardener or the chef?”
Despite Dawkins’s implication that fundamental questions about our existence have more to do with science than religion, many scientists have been reluctant to speculate about the timing and manner of our demise. A few, however, have taken the leap, including Arizona State University astronomer Chris Impey, whose 2010 book “How It Ends: From You to the Universe” addresses this frightening and fascinating issue.
Impey points out that the human race, the Earth and the universe will all probably end at different times and in different ways. Our first and most immediate threat, according to Impey, is ourselves.
“We are a tribal people covered with a thin veneer of arts and culture,” he says. “Fifty years ago the greatest threat would have been thermonuclear war. Today, it’s likely some future weapon we haven’t imagined yet.”
Not everyone agrees on this point. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued in his recent book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” that humanity is becoming more peaceful.
If we don’t destroy ourselves, either through war or the destruction of our environment, Impey believes that unicellular and other exceedingly simple organisms are our next-greatest threat.
“The Earth has been dominated by microbes for billions of years,” he noted. “Having mammals and and other large animals with brains is a recent occurrence. Maybe we’re slightly anomalous.”
Microbes have a tremendous advantage over us: They evolve a million times faster than humans. There are more generations of bacteria every 10 years than human generations since our species diverged from our nearest primate cousins, according to Impey. That makes them more adaptable to a changing environment, especially as global warming accelerates that change.
To understand why microbes are likely to destroy us, consider tuberculosis. The disease has plagued mankind for thousands of years and killed untold millions. It has achieved this even though we identified the pathogen that causes it in 1882 and have been desperately trying to destroy it ever since. Now think about all of the pathogens we don’t yet know about and those that haven’t yet evolved. It’s entirely possible that some bacterium will figure out how to destroy us before we destroy it.
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