Physicist predicted Friday the 13th 'doomsday' in 1960. It is 13 days away

A mathematician calculated in the 1960s that an apocalypse will swallow Earth in the year 2026. He even gave the exact date: November 13, Friday. Physicist Heinz von Foerster wrote in Science magazine, "Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve. They will be squeezed to death." The Austrian American and his colleagues said that the world population would grow to such an extent by this date that there would be no more space left. As a result, everyone will be squeezed to death.

While this doomsday scenario appears unlikely to unfold, it is important to know that the prediction is different from those made by mystics and prophecy makers. Heinz von Foerster's forecast was rooted in science and mathematics. He made calculations based on historical data and the rate of population growth over decades to estimate that the human population would surge to infinity by this date.

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Population growth analysis over 2,000 years

The physicist analysed population growth trends over the past 2,000 years, from 400 BCE until 1958. In the paper titled Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, AD 2026, he pointed out that it doubled over a few centuries, but this interval was getting shorter and shorter. He stated that by 2020, the global population would touch 25 billion. Foerster argued that pretty soon, it would reach a point where this interval would become zero, leading humanity to reach an impossible mathematical endpoint called "Doomsday".

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He warned that governments need to take appropriate steps quickly and implement a control mechanism, as "tomorrow it will be more difficult." However, mathematicians and demographers slammed his paper, as it even ignored the fact that a baby takes nine months to develop. Besides, the rate of population growth varies in different countries as it is influenced by the socioeconomic characteristics.

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However, some experts said its "predictions for future populations turned out to be highly accurate for a while." Western University historian Alan MacEachern wrote in The Conversation, “Its core equation yielded projections that were better than those of most demographers throughout the 1970s and 1980s.”

Apocalypse on November 13?

Nevertheless, we now know that the human population is still far from reaching this "doomsday" point. When the study was done, the world had three billion people. Today, we stand at approximately 8.2 billion. We might not squeeze on November 13, but the world is still facing catastrophic situations in the future, especially in the face of climate change and the growth of artificial intelligence.