A professor famous for predicting the imminent demise of the human race at regular intervals since the 1970s has predicted the imminent demise of the human race.
Paul Ehrlich, who is the Bing Professor of Population Studies at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, says it's definitely on this time. In a tinned statement issued on Friday, the arm-waving prof lays it on the line:
There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence ... the window of opportunity is rapidly closing ...
"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," Ehrlich said ...
"If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said lead author Gerardo Ceballos.
The original article can be found at The Register, with coverage of the cited study coming from ScienceMag.org
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @08:18PM
No, it won't--unless it somehow acquires a twin star.
A nova is an accretion phenomenon associated with binary stars exchanging mass.
Sol won't supernova either.
That requires a star of at least 3.2 solar masses.
What Sol will do [wikipedia.org] is run out of hydrogen fuel, expand enormously to become a red giant (engulfing Mercury, Venus Earth, and Mars[1]), go through a helium-burning phase, then collapse to become a white dwarf.
[1] So, Mars isn't a long-term colonization solution either--even with e.g. inexhaustible fission power sources.
-- gewg_