HUMANITY is more likely to go extinct next year than you are to be struck by lightning or win the lottery.
That's the verdict of a glum new study, which warns that the chances we'll die out in any given year are alarmingly high.
Scientists at the University of Oxford crunched the numbers on how likely it is Earth will suffer a natural extinction.
That means killed off en masse by a giant volcanic eruption or asteroid impact, rather than something man-made like nuclear warfare.
"Out of all species that have existed, over 99% are now extinct," researchers wrote in their paper.
"Although human activity is dramatically increasing extinction rates for many species, species extinctions were regular occurrences long before humanity emerged.
"Many of these extinctions were caused by gradual environmental shifts, evolutionary arms races, or local interspecific competition.
"Others were abrupt, being part of global mass extinctions caused by asteroid impacts, volcanism, or causes as of yet to be identified.
"Could such a catastrophe befall our own species?"
Based on their figures, scientists calculated there's a maximum 1 in 14,000 chance the human race will die out in any given year.
That means the violent demise of our species is 50 times more likely than you are to be hit by lightning in your lifetime (1 in 700,000).
It's more than 3,000 times more likely than you are to win the National Lottery jackpot in any given draw (1 in 45million).
Perhaps most terrifying is that our actual chances of extinction would actually be much higher if man-made factors were taken into account.
Climate change and nuclear or biological warfare are two such factors. The researchers didn't calculate our extinction risk with these in mind.
As well as super-volcanoes and asteroids, scientists said life on Earth was at risk of a "stellar explosion".
What causes lightning?
Here's everything you need to know...
- Lightning is a big flash or bolt of electricity caused by a thunderstorm
- They're thought to kill between 75 to 100 unlucky souls every year
- Strikes are actually formed by frozen raindrops in the sky
- Within a thunderclap, bits of ice bump into one another, forming an electrical charge
- After a while, the whole cloud fills up with electrical charges
- These split into negatively charged electrons at the bottom of the cloud and positively charged protons at the top
- Eventually, the cloud discharges by sending a bolt of current to the ground
That's the detonation of a nearby star, which if it were to happen would shower our planet with deadly radiation.
Scientists also warned of "vacuum collapse", in which a strange bubble forms in space.
Within this region, the laws of physics would totally break down, and the bubble would expand through the universe at the speed of light, obliterating everything in its path.
The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
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In other news, scientists warned in April that humans could be wiped out in a dinosaur-style extinction event.
Humanity has just 20 years to save itself from a mass extinction that could wipe out our species.
And, here are the three most likely ways humanity could die out.
Are you worried about humanity's future? Let us know in the comments!
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