What Will Happen To Earth In 2026 Curiosity Explain

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 27, 2025, 12:47 PM

what will happen to earth in 2026 curiosity explain

Science Carries On. Here Are Our Top Topics for 2026 Whether space, health, technology or environment, here are the issues in science that the editors of Scientific American are focusing on for 2026 The editors of Scientific American look to 2026 as a chance to peer into the future to see what science may be unfolding and what discoveries may lurk on the horizon. But the new year is also a chance to look back at recent turmoil and instability in federally funded scientific research, the wholesale dismissal of evidence in policymaking, and—in spite of these things—the perseverance... We celebrate the fact-checkers in the field of knowledge and you, our readers, who continue to trust us to bring you what’s real, what’s factual and what’s amazing in our world.

Here are some of the topics we are paying attention to in 2026. The coming year in the U.S. will be pivotal in the renewed push to use more nuclear power. This drive results largely from the energy requirements of the artificial-intelligence boom. Demand for nuclear power has largely been flat in this century, eclipsed by interest in wind, solar and natural gas. Moves in Congress—notably, a 2024 law streamlining reactor licensing—and actions by both the Biden and Trump administrations to push exports and arrange financing aim to reverse the trend.

Advanced technology demonstrations supported by the U.S. Department of Energy may start to come to fruition. But loosened export regulations and favored technologies raise questions about safety, nuclear waste disposal and the risks of nuclear proliferation. Projections of spiraling energy demand for AI drive the nuclear push, despite warnings of an AI bubble that might burst, dragging down the entire economy. If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

For Americans who felt 2025 was a ceaseless storm of norm-challenging change, there may be balm in the celebrations of the republic’s 250th birthday on July 4. But more soberly, 2026 will also be marked by Supreme Court decisions that could upend the very foundation of our democracy. Will work insecurity grow as AI matures from loud infancy into a tricky “technolescence”? What will memes have to teach us? And what about that new musical genre bubbling out of Asia? Bruin experts cast a light on the path ahead.

UCLA Anderson School of Management macroeconomist Clement Bohr predicts the economy will remain largely “frozen” out of the gate but will see improvements as the year progresses on the back of fiscal and monetary... His overall general outlook is “rosy, with stimulations from the Big Beautiful Bill working through, if — and it’s a big if — administration polices remain stable and predictable.” Bohr, an adjunct professor of global economics and management, is monitoring talk of an artificial intelligence bubble — just seven AI-fueled companies account for a third of all Wall Street wealth. But Bohr believes the tech giants are so flush with cash that even if some spending is kept off balance sheets through “special vehicles” created by often-veiled private credit concerns, the companies “can ride... “Right now, these giants generate about $60 billion a year in AI-related revenue,” Bohr says. “But by 2030, to keep up with rising chip power and costs, that will have to be between half a trillion and a trillion dollars.”

A leading researcher behind the internationally cited UCLA Anderson Forecast, Bohr is most concerned about the forthcoming Supreme Court decision as to whether a president can replace board members of the long-independent Federal Reserve... “Economics is a social science, not a hard science, but one certainty that unites all economists is that subjecting federal money policy to political rather than business cycles, typically lowering interest rates for election... (Turkey’s hastily lowered interest rates resulted in 87% inflation; its interest rates are now around 38%.) “We have not hit the Fed’s inflation target for five years, and even a slight signal about loss... 2026 will see AI boost research across many areas, especially biomedicine. But there will be a price to pay and a need to consider the toxic side effects as it grows from loud infant into hungry teen, says Ramesh Srinivasan, professor of information studies at... It’s not just land, water, electricity and overexcited marketing that are key factors, but also AI’s social justice and social-psychological effects.

Can we keep up with the rapid changes, with governments willing or capable of shielding us from the dark side of this new wave of technology? Says Srinivasan: “We may start to find out in 2026.” India’s Aditya-L1 spacecraft launched in 2023. Next year, it will observe the Sun during its peak activity phase.Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation via AP/Alamy Research powered by artificial intelligence made leaps this year, and it is here to stay. AI ‘agents’ that integrate several large language models (LLMs) to carry out complex, multi-step processes are likely to be used more widely, some with little human oversight.

The coming year might even bring the first consequential scientific advances made by AI. But heavier use could also expose serious failures in some systems. Researchers have already reported errors that AI agents are prone to, such as the deletion of data. Next year will also bring techniques that move beyond LLMs, which are expensive to train. Newer approaches focus on designing small-scale AI models that learn from a limited pool of data and can specialize in solving specific reasoning puzzles. These systems do not generate text, but process mathematical representations of information.

This year, one such tiny AI model beat massive LLMs at a logic test. Next year could see the launch of two clinical trials to develop personalized gene therapies for children with rare genetic disorders. The efforts expand on the treatment of KJ Muldoon, a baby boy with a rare metabolic disorder who received a CRIPSR therapy tailored to correct his specific disease-causing mutation. The team that treated Muldoon plans to seek approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to run a clinical trial in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that will test gene-editing therapies in more children with... These conditions are caused by variants in seven genes that can be addressed with the same type of gene editing as was used in Muldoon’s therapy. Another team hopes to begin a similar trial for genetic disorders of the immune system next year.

A physicist at the University of Illinois has predicted that the world could face a catastrophic end in the year 2026, citing runaway population growth as the driving force behind the looming crisis. Professor Heinz von Foerster, writing in the 4 November edition of Science, claimed that if humanity continues to grow at its current accelerating rate, the planet will reach a critical point on Friday, 13... According to his calculations, the number of people on Earth will theoretically reach infinity, resulting in the collapse of civilisation not through starvation, but through extreme overcrowding. Nigerian prophetess shares predictions on what will happen as football season returns Von Foerster’s prediction is based on a complex mathematical model that assumes humanity avoids large-scale disasters such as nuclear war, develops unlimited food production, and continues to reproduce at an ever-quickening pace. He argued that even the most advanced food technologies cannot keep up with exponential population growth.

The year 2026 will come sooner than we think. I mean, it’s always like that, especially as we get older — the years seem to pass faster than ever before. However, this time it really feels like we are kind of standing at the edge of a cliff, because it seems the world could change dramatically any day now. And of course, history also teaches us that change often arrives not gradually, but in sudden bursts that reshape everything we thought we knew. Consider how the iPhone transformed our world in 2007, or how the pandemic changed everything, both for the worse, perhaps? Well, now imagine that pace of change compressed into a single year.

That could easily be 2026, because so many things are happening right now. Yep, it's that time again. It's time to play every doomsayer's favorite apocalyptic game: "What Way Will We All Die?" Is it nuclear weapons this time? Robotic and/or AI overlords? The disastrous consequences of climate change? The good ole' zombie horde swarming the land in search of living flesh?

An inexplicable cosmic event expanding from the vacuum of space to consume not only Earth but the entire solar system — nay, the galaxy? Maybe an alien invasion? Nah. There are just too many humans. Basically, that's what Austrian-American physicist and professor at the University of Illinois Heinz von Foerster thought. Born in Vienna, Austria in 1911, von Foerster got his doctorate in physics in 1944, wound up in the United States post-World War II, won a Guggenheim Fellowship, published some papers, made headways into...

He also founded the University of Illinois' Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) in 1958 to study "computational principles in living organisms." And what was this very clever person's take on the demise of humanity? As Time explains, he predicted that prosperity equals death. Assuming we don't blow ourselves up and our food supply remains intact, von Foerster pulled out a pencil and in 1960 calculated that humanity will be "squeezed to death" by 2026. Humanity will breed itself to oblivion. It's difficult in 2024 to look around and think that the human population will overwhelm the planet like ants in two years, especially if you live in a place like, say, Alaska.

Sure, the number of humans skyrocketed through the 20th century from 3 billion in 1960 (when Heinz von Foerster made his apocalyptic prediction) to 8 billion at present, as Worldometer shows. One-thousand years ago there were only about 275 million humans alive. That means that not only is the human population increasing, it's increasing more and more rapidly. This is true no matter what you've heard about decreased fertility rates over past decades, as sites like the World Economic Forum outline. The United Nations cites greater human survival rates into reproductive age as a major cause of our population boom. The United Nations also reports that the human population will reach almost 10 billion people by 2050, and over 11 billion by 2100.

What Will Happen To Earth In 2026 Curiosity Explain

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