• Question: what will the world look like 20 years from now or are scientists right and a meteor is going to hit the earth?

    Asked by benjook to Alastair, Hywel, Keith on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Hywel Vaughan

      Hywel Vaughan answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      That’s a really difficult question to answer ben! The truth is there is no telling what the world will look like in 20 years… it all depends on what discoveries we make!
      If you look backwards, 20 years ago we were still in the Cold War and Microsoft had just released the lovely Windows 3.0! Look at how much we have come forward since then!
      In 20 years we could well have solved the issues of climate change and be looking beyond our planet for exploration, or we could have damaged the planet even more and be looking beyond our planet for a new home! Who knows 🙂
      I don’t think that a meteor is going to strike the earth any time soon, but I guess that is something we shall just have to look out for in the future 🙂

    • Photo: Keith Brain

      Keith Brain answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      Lots of meteorites will hit the earth over the next 20 years (lots of shooting stars), but I don’t think that the chance of an earth-changing meteor hitting the earth any time soon are very high at all. There’s probably around 100 million years between really significant events, so the chances of anything that big happening in the next 20 years are close to zero. We’re safe, and its still worth trying hard at school 😉

      Here’s my thoughts on some changes in health:
      In 20 years, I don’t think that things will be very much different. I think that we will be able to order our entire genetic sequence to be read, but interpreting what that information means for the individual (eg. what will you die from and at what age) will be very difficult. Cancers will still happen, but we’ll live a year or two longer with them as treatments get better. Polio will have been eradicated. We might finally get better treatments for malaria (a really terrible disease in lots of not-so-rich tropical countries), and hopefully there will be a way of eradicating HIV!

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