Name: 【TED】Stephen Petranek: 10 ways the world could end (Stephen Petranek: 10 ways the world could end)
Uploaded: 2017-12-13T03:30:34.000Z
Duration: 29 min 55 s
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The advances that have taken place in astronomy,

cosmology and biology, in the last 10 years,

Adverbs of degree

to the point where we know more about our universe and how it works

But there was something else that I've noticed

as those changes were taking place, as people were starting to find out that

hmm ... yeah, there really is a black hole at the center of every galaxy.

The science writers and editors -- I shouldn't say science writers,

I should say people who write about science --

and editors would sit down over a couple of beers,

after a hard day of work, and start talking about

some of these incredible perceptions about how the universe works.

And they would inevitably end up in what I thought was a very bizarre place,

which is ways the world could end very suddenly.

And that's what I want to talk about today. (Laughter)

(Voice: Can we finish up a little early?)

Stephen Petranek: At first, it all seemed a little fantastical to me, but after challenging a lot of these ideas,

I began to take a lot of them seriously. And then September 11 happened,

I can't go to the TED conference and talk about how the world is going to end.

Nobody wants to hear that. Not after this!

And that got me into a discussion with some other people, other scientists,

about maybe some other subjects, and one of the guys I talked to,

"You know, I think there are a lot of solutions to the problems you brought up,"

and reminds me of Michael's talk yesterday

and his mother saying you can't have a solution if you don't have a problem.

So, we went out looking for solutions to ways that the world might end tomorrow,

Which leads me to a videotape of a President Bush

press conference from a couple of weeks ago.

President George W. Bush: Whatever it costs to defend our security,

and whatever it costs to defend our freedom, we must pay it.

He wants two trillion dollars to protect us from terrorists next year,

a two-trillion-dollar federal budget, which will land us back into deficit spending real fast.

But terrorists aren't the only threat we face.

There are really serious calamities staring us in the eye

that we're in the same kind of denial about

that we were about terrorism, and what could've happened on September 11.

I would propose, therefore, that if we took 10 billion dollars

which is two one hundredths of that budget --

and we doled out a billion dollars to each one of these problems

I'm going to talk to you about, the vast majority could be solved,

and the rest we could deal with. So, I hope you find this both fascinating --

I'm fascinated by this kind of stuff, I gotta admit --

But I also hope, because I think the people in this room can literally change the world,

I hope you take some of this stuff away with you,

and when you have an opportunity to be influential,

that you try to get some heavy-duty money spent on some of these ideas.

So let's start. Number 10: we lose the will to survive.

We live in an incredible age of modern medicine.

We are all much healthier than we were 20 years ago.

People around the world are getting better medicine --

The World Health Organization now estimates

that one out of five people on the planet is clinically depressed.

And the World Health Organization also says that depression is the

biggest epidemic that humankind has ever faced.

Soon, genetic breakthroughs and even better medicine

are going to allow us to think of 100 as a normal lifespan.

A female child born tomorrow, on average -- median -- will live to age 83.

Our life longevity is going up almost a year for every year that passes.

Now the problem with all of this, getting older,

is that people over 65 are the most likely people to commit suicide.

We don't really have mental health insurance in this country,

and it's -- (Applause) -- it's really a crime.

Something like 98 percent of all people with depression,

-- I have a friend with stunningly severe depression

-- this is a curable disease, with present medicine and present technology.

But it is often a combination of talk therapy and pills.

Pills alone don't do it, especially in clinically depressed people.

You ought to be able to go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist,

and put down your 10-dollar copay, and get treated,

just like you do when you got a cut on your arm. It's ridiculous.

Secondly, drug companies are not going to develop really sophisticated

psychoactive drugs. We know that most mental illnesses have a biological

And we know just an amazing amount more about the brain now than we

did 10 years ago. We need a pump-push from the federal government,

through NIH and National Science -- NSF --

and places like that to start helping the drug companies

develop some advanced psychoactive drugs.

Moving on. Number nine -- don't laugh -- aliens invade Earth.

Ten years ago, you couldn't have found an astronomer --

well, very few astronomers -- in the world who would've told you that

there are any planets anywhere outside our solar system.

1995, we found three. The count now is up to 80 --

we're finding about two or three a month.

All of the ones we've found, by the way, are in this little, teeny, tiny corner where we live,

in the Milky Way. There must be millions of planets in the Milky Way,

and as Carl Sagan insisted for many years,