Future Predictions, Speculations and Goals.

[Neversoft]

So I was searching through Wikipedia the other day and ended up looking at all of the future decades. I discovered that many scientists and other smart people around the world had already calculated when they believe certain events will take place in the future. I found it extremely interesting what some people had predicted, especially in the 2050s, and also what some organisations and people hope to have accomplished by certain decades in the future - such as NASA's manned mission to Mars and Jupiter's moon. I thought I'd share it with you guys on this forum as it could make a good discussion and I'm sure there are others that would be interested in seeing this information. I didn't post all of it, there are of course many other predicted events such as solar eclipses and the like, so if you want to see all of the predictions just click on whatever year you want to look at below.

2020s
- JAXA plans to send robotic astronauts to the Moon, followed by human astronauts.
- Last nuclear power plant in Germany scheduled to shut down.
- Global oil production is expected to peak.
- The Russian Federal Space Agency says that they plan to be mining helium-3 from the moon by this year.
- NASA Venus Surface Explorer mission to Venus.
- Shanghai is set to become an "international financial centre and global shipping hub."
- Volvo hopes to use radar, sonar and other advanced technologies to create a crash-proof car by 2020.
- Cars that drive themselves on smart highways, 3-D video conferencing, artificial brain cells, artificial lungs, artificial kidneys, identification of the genetic links of all diseases - all these have been predicted for 2020.
- Futurist Ray Kurzweil puts 2029 as the year most likely for a breakthrough in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He expects that around this time, computers will reach human intelligence levels, and shortly thereafter surpass the capabilities of the human brain.
- If current trends continue, according to the United Nations, the Aral Sea could disappear completely by this year.
- Intel predicts the performance of supercomputers to reach zettaflops scale by 2029.

2030s
- NASA aims to land astronauts on Mars, most likely using the Orion spacecraft, as part of Project Constellation.
- The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will construct a manned lunar base.
- All New Zealand cars will be hybrid, bio-fuel, or electric.
- "More robots than people in developed countries" is predicted for 2030.
- 32-bit computer clocks overflow to represent the date as 1901.

2040s
- Possible manned mission to Jupiter's moon, Callisto.
- The population of Earth is expected to be 9 billion people, according to the United States Census Bureau.
- NASA predicts that by this year it will cost only tens of dollars per pound to launch humans or cargo into space.
- Climatologists predict that sometime in 2040 the Arctic Ocean will be free of ice, at least during the autumn.

2050s
- The United Kingdom could have the largest population in Europe by 2050 and be the third biggest recipient of migrants in the world, UN projections suggest.
- In November 2006, Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, “warned of a global collapse of all species being fished, if fishing continues at its current pace.”
- In October 2007, artificial intelligence researcher David Levy predicted that by 2050, human-robot marriages and human-robot sex will become common.
- According to a 2002 study by World Wildlife Fund, planet Earth will not have sufficient resources to sustain human life by this year. This is barring the fact that vertical farms, which have potential to have a far greater cultivating and livestocking capacity than their flat, traditional grandfathers, will help sustain the ever-growing population beyond the capacity that traditional farms will be able to ever sustain.
- In March 2006, Professor Gerry Gilmore predicted that ground-based astronomy would become impossible by this year because of pollution from aircraft exhaust trails and climate change.
- In June 2007, a study by American researchers concluded that the global prevalence of Alzheimer's disease will quadruple by 2050 from its 2006 figure to over 100 million. However, this is barring the fact that medical science will eventually advance to the point where society will figure out how to stop and reverse the effects of Alzheimer's.
- The United Nations predicts that 2 out of every 9 people in the world will be 60 years or older. World life expectancy at birth is also expected to exceed 76 years.
- Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission's Institute for Energy believes that solar power from North Africa can provide 100 GW to the entire continent of Europe.

2060s
- Halley's Comet reaches its perihelion, the closest point to the Sun—the last return reached its perihelion on February 9, 1986.
- Isaac Newton predicted that the world, according to his interpretation of the Bible, would end no sooner than 2060.

2070s
- The 2003 post-mortem on the UK's government weapons inspector, Dr David Kelly, will be published.
- The Ozone layer is expected to have fully recovered.
- All of Michael Jackson's songs will go into the public domain.
- Bede computed that the world would end in 2076, extrapolating from Biblical references and the year of Jesus' birth.

2080s
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger will enter the public domain.
- All classified information held by the British Government about the Falklands War is to be released to the public.
- According to The China Modernization Report, China is expected to be one of the most developed countries in the world, equivalent to the level of the United States of the early 21st century.

2090s
- The European Energy Council and Greenpeace believes that the entire world can be powered by renewable energy by 2090.
- Material from the Cullen Inquiry into the Dunblane school shootings in Scotland, which was subject to a 100-year closure order, will be released to the public.
- 2099 is the maximum calendar year limit within the Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 Operating Systems.
- According to one study, 83% of the Amazon rainforest may have been destroyed by now.

2100s
- By 2100, 12% (about 1250) of the bird species existing at the beginning of the 21st century are expected to be extinct or threatened with extinction.
- By 2100, Emperor Penguins could be pushed to the brink of extinction due to global climate change, according to a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution study from January 2009.

[Tintinnabulate]

- The 2003 post-mortem on the UK's government weapons inspector, Dr David Kelly, will be published.

why in 2070? :S

Edit:

Lord Hutton ruled that evidence related to his death will be kept secret for 70 years.[2]

Weird... why keep it a secret :S.

[[Chris]]

The worlds ending in 2012. Your argument is invalid.

Nahhhhh.

Well, some of that is interesting, but i can see some of the things happening earlier tbh..

'human-robot marriages and human-robot sex will become common.'
Thats.. Disturbing to say the least.

And BOTH the 2100 predictions (Extinction of animals) Seems to be closer to happening than 90 years.

[-:Undertaker:-]

- The 2003 post-mortem on the UK's government weapons inspector, Dr David Kelly, will be published.

why in 2070? :S

Edit:


Weird... why keep it a secret :S.

"There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge." - Queen to Paul Burrell (allegedly).

Work it out for yourself really, a man who exposes the Bush-Blair lies and the sexed up dossier used to support the invasion of Iraq ends up dead and evidence points to foul play yet government refuses to release the facts surrounding the death. I am not one for conspiracy theories, but that case stinks of foul play and certainly has something more sinister behind it. If there are no sinister forces behind it and it was suicide, then its pretty clear that the actions of the Blair government drove this man to take his own life not to mention the media frenzy that surrounded him. As for the topic at hand, I think the following quote sums it up pretty nicely;

"We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts." - Harold MacMillan

[Anarchist]

don't even be sure of NASA doing a lot of their "planned" missions.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6101XF20100201

Especially with healthcare already passed in the USA, there are going to be budget cuts.

[Oleh]

i have my own prediction

2020: Virgin Galactic will have reached more passengers yearly than Ryan air (if it still exists then)

[AlexOC]

Interesting stuff.

2020: HabboxForum.com becomes the most visited website on the internet. Sierk is praised as god.


good times.

[Fez]

2012 - The world will end not by natural disaster, but by absolute hysteria and panic of mankind. Scaremongering shows on primetime TV and false reports of the News will lead (possible hundreds) of thousands to commit mass suicide.

The prediction itself will end the world.

(no it won't ;D )

[Inseriousity.]

A lot of the robot ones sounded like a science-fiction book/movie (I think of iRobot hehe)... just me who'd prefer it remained fiction?

[MrPinkPanther]

2015 - Nick Clegg becomes UK Prime Minister.