Experts have once again attempted to calculate how much time humanity may have left, and while the answer isn’t immediate doom, it’s still far from comforting.
Over the years, experts have offered different predictions about the fate of our species.
One Nobel Prize-winning physicist has suggested humans could disappear within the next 30 years.
A supercomputer at the University of Bristol estimated that humanity could survive for another 250 million years.
This latest prediction lands somewhere between those extremes. The scientist behind it claims the estimate is 95 percent accurate, although the reasoning has sparked plenty of debate.
The idea traces back to 1983, when astrophysicist Brandon Carter introduced a concept known as the “doomsday argument”.
Expert makes prediction on human lifespan
Expert makes ‘accurate’ prediction on when the world will end. Credit: BanksPhotos / Getty
Carter began by estimating how many humans had ever lived. His calculation put the figure at roughly 117 billion people throughout history. For comparison, today’s global population sits at just over eight billion.
Using the Copernican principle, inspired by astronomer Nicholas Copernicus, who demonstrated that Earth is not the center of the universe, Carter applied similar logic to humanity itself.
His argument suggested that if you lined up every human who has ever lived on a timeline, it would be statistically more likely that any one person occupies a relatively ordinary position in that sequence rather than appearing right at the beginning or near the very end.
To explain the concept, Scientific American compared it to choosing between two boxes of numbered balls.
One box contains balls numbered one to ten, while the other contains balls numbered one to 100,000.
If someone randomly draws ball number four, it’s far more likely that it came from the smaller box than the much larger one.
Applying that same logic to humanity, Carter argued that if modern humans are roughly the 117-billionth people to be born, then it’s statistically more likely that we’re somewhere around the middle of the total human population rather than at the beginning of an unimaginably large future population.
Based on this reasoning, Carter estimated that approximately 2.34 trillion people will ever be born.
Using current birth trends, the calculation becomes relatively straightforward.
With around 130 million babies born every year over the last four decades, Carter projected that it would take roughly 17,100 more years for humanity to reach a total of 2.34 trillion births.
That would place humanity’s potential endpoint around the year 19,100 AD.
In other words, according to this theory, that’s when we may need to start worrying.
Not all experts agree
Unsurprisingly, many scientists remain skeptical of Carter’s conclusions.
One major criticism is that the prediction relies entirely on probability and mathematics rather than real-world evidence about the future of civilization.
The theory doesn’t account for technological advances, social changes, environmental shifts, or catastrophic events that could dramatically alter humanity’s trajectory.
And given present-day concerns such as climate change, global instability, and the threat of nuclear conflict, some experts argue that predicting humanity’s fate 17,000 years into the future may be overly optimistic.
Whether Carter’s calculation proves accurate or not, one thing is certain: humanity’s future remains impossible to predict with complete certainty, even if the maths suggests we might have until around 19,100 AD before reaching the end of the line.
