It's the end of the world as we know it, per a physicist's 1960 prediction
Heinz von Foerster thought population would grow exponentially and "squeeze" us all to death.
On Friday, November 13, 2026, Microsoft found itself in a global outage, leaving millions of users unable to access essential tools like Outlook. This incident occurred on the day a physicist had predicted the end of humanity. Heinz von Foerster, a physicist who published a 1960 paper in the journal Science, had predicted that overpopulation would reach a breaking point by today.
His prediction echoed the concerns raised by English economist Thomas Malthus in 1798, who also feared that an ever-growing population would eventually exhaust the food supply, leading to humanity's starvation. Von Foerster's analysis took into account past population growth trends, but he assumed these trends would remain consistent in the future, ultimately projecting that human population growth would continue indefinitely.
While he believed humanity would find ingenious solutions to the food supply issue, he ultimately believed that we would be "squeezed to death."
Written by urgent.news from Ars Technica Science's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
