Naked Science - Human Extinction

“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” ~ Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

Today on Far Future Horizons we present an episode of the acclaimed National Geographic television documentary series Naked Science that deals with the the possibility of humanity’s ultimate demise.

Is the extinction of the human species a real possibility?

This instalment of Naked Science looks at the possibility of  humans extinction through the lens of past mass extinction events during the four billion year tenure of life on Earth to see how the human species would fare if those disasters were to occurred today. 

One of the interesting theories about mass extinctions comes at the very end, where two scientists offer a radical theory concerning mass extinctions, namely,  that our planet’s motion through the Milky Way Galaxy as it bobs up and down above and below the plane of the galaxy periodically exposes the Earth to a greater flux of the cosmic radiation. 

While cosmic rays may not be to blame for the extinctions directly, they may be a factor in making life forms on our planet genetically weaker in the face of the environmental adversities that may trigger mass extinction events. 

Naked Science - Human Extinction
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