In this “fun”, festive episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart discuss two ways—one man-made, one natural—that our species might be wiped off the planet.
The first is “mirror life”, a science-fiction-sounding threat that hardly anyone had heard of until last week, when a group of concerned scientists wrote an open letter arguing that this is a technology that should never be developed. The second is the eruption of a supervolcano, which has a scarily high likelihood of happening in the next century… and for which scientists say we’re “woefully underprepared”. Have a cheery Christmas!
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Show notes
Mirror life:
The 300-page full Stanford report
Science perspective piece on the risks of mirror life
Asimov Press explainer article
Supervolcanoes:
Nature piece from 2022 about our “woeful” level of preparation for a massive volcanic eruption
1816, the “year without a summer”
Evidence against the idea that Mt. Tambora nearly drove humans to extinction
2024 paper that’s sceptical of global cooling beyond 1.5 degrees C
2023 paper with a much more pessimistic scenario
Two useful discussions (first, second) of the effects of supervolcanoes on the Effective Altruism forum
2018 article on what interventions might prevent or mitigate supervolcanic eruptions
Credits
The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.
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