The Doomsday Handbook
Alok Jha
Language: English
Pages: 236
ISBN: B012HV8DQC
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
We live in a world positively teeming with threats and apocalyptic scenarios. Many of them are familiar: terrorism, deadly viruses, global warming and war, but many others most of us can't even imagine: self-replicating nanobots that can devour an entire planet, high-energy experiments that threaten to suck the Earth into a mini black hole, and even super-sophisticated scientific contraptions that can put an end to the entire universe.
Living with the Changing California Coast
The Paradox of Evolution: The Strange Relationship Between Natural Selection and Reproduction
Principles of Bone Regeneration
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, which helps them to create their own pesticides against the corn borer. The Bt-10 strain is a laboratory version that is kept for research purposes, while Bt-11 is licensed for animal feed in the US. Stories like this justifiably cause worry among consumers, though it is worth pointing out that there is little robust evidence so far that any GM crops are actually harmful when eaten. In the UK, naturalists worry not only about the safety of the crops per se, but
course, it probably won’t take long for someone to synthesize existing viruses or bacteria too, using publicly available genome information, or to design a new, rapidly expanding bug to which no human or important crop species has any immune resistance. Building and unleashing something like that on to an unsuspecting world would be catastrophic. * * * It probably won’t take long for someone to synthesize existing viruses or bacteria too, using publicly available genome information, or to
rocks from space. Scientists are designing space missions that could theoretically divert or destroy any incoming asteroids. * * * Objects larger than six kilometers wide, which could cause mass extinction, will collide with Earth every 100 million years. Experts agree that we are overdue for a big one. * * * The effects of a collision The Earth is bombarded constantly with cosmic debris, at speeds of more than 16 km/s (10 mps miles per second). Around 100 tons of rubble hits the
aliens. Chief among them is distance. Our galaxy is big—it would take a beam of light 100,000 years to cross from one end to the other. If our nearest neighbors were life forms on the forest moon of Endor, 1,000 light years away, it would take a millennium for us to receive any message that they might send. A response would take the same amount of time to reach the aliens. It is not a timescale that allows for quick banter. This picture was taken by a US Coast Guard photographer in Salem,
Today, the nuclear picture is more complex. Nine nations—Russia, the US, France, China, the UK, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea—have more than 25,000 nuclear warheads between them. Many more nations might be on the verge of developing the weapons. Prime ministers and presidents around the world profess to aspire to a dream world in which the number of these weapons is reduced (perhaps to zero). In July 2009, US president Barack Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev agreed to drop
