What do you think is the greatest threat to the world? The Guardian published a piece today asking ten scientists this very question with some very unique answers varying from black holes to climate change (surprise!). For once, overpopulation was not mentioned, however something far more interesting than black holes was: telomere erosion.
“On the end of every animal’s chromosomes are protective caps called telomeres. Without them our chromosomes would become unstable. Each time a cell divides it never quite copies its telomere completely and throughout our lifetime the telomeres become shorter and shorter as the cells multiply. Eventually, when they become critically short, we start to see age-related diseases, such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart attacks and strokes.
“However, it is not just through our lifetime that telomeres get shorter. My theory is that there is a tiny loss of telomere length from one generation to the next, mirroring the process of ageing in individuals. Over thousands of generations the telomere gets eroded down to its critical level. Once at the critical level we would expect to see outbreaks of age-related diseases occurring earlier in life and finally a population crash. Telomere erosion could explain the disappearance of a seemingly successful species, such as Neanderthal man, with no need for external factors such as climate change.”
I wonder how he explains why we are living for longer than ever before? Not only that, they gave it a “danger score” of 8 out of 10. Whatever one may think about it, the article is certainly worth checking out. I’ll admit, it gave me a pretty good laugh, especially when they ranked climate change with a “danger score” of 6 out of 10, yet viral pandemics and nuclear war only had scores of 3 and 8, respectively.
As for me, I think this whole “end of the world” silliness is just that: silliness.
Posted by Arcane at 05:00 PM