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| Our
Final Hour |
| By: |
Martin
Rees |
| Publisher: |
HarperCollins
Publishers (US) |
| Format: |
Hardcover |
| Price: |
$39.95 |
| Unit of Measure: |
Copy |
| About the
Book: |
A scientist
known for unraveling the complexities of the
universe, Sir Martin Rees not warns that
humankind is potentially the maker of its own
demise - and the demise of the cosmos. With
clarity and precision, Rees maps out the ways
technology could destroy our species and thereby
foreclose the potential of a living universe
whose evolution has just begun.
Rees
forecasts that the odds are no better than
fifty-fifty that humankind will survive to the
end of the twenty-first century. Science is
advancing at an exhilarating rate, but with a
dark side: Our increasingly interconnected world
is vulnerable to new risks, "bio" or "cyber,"
terror or error. The dangers from twenty-first
century technology could be graver and more
intractable than the threat of nuclear
devastation that we faced for decades. And
human-induced pressures on the global
environment may engender higher risks than the
age-old hazards of earthquakes, eruptions, and
asteroid impacts.
Rees explores the
startling scenarios that science and technology
have made possible or even likely. We could be
wiped out by lethal "engineered" airborne
viruses, or by rogue nano-machines that
replicate catastrophically. Experiments that
crash together atomic nuclei could start a chain
reaction that erodes all atoms of Earth, or
could even tear the fabric of space itself.
Bioterror or bioerror could kill a million
people within twenty years. But as Rees so
eloquently reveals, it would be nearly
impossible to reduce these risks without
encroaching on cherished personal freedoms and
the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
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