Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, believes civilisation has only a 50 per cent chance of surviving to 2100 without suffering a man-made catastrophe.
And the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Professor John Brown, has an equally bleak outlook, fearing a random event from outer space is the most likely cause of our demise.
They will take to the stage to put forward their stark predictions in the discussion "Fire in the Sky: Cosmic Threats to Earth".
Despite having widely differing views, these two titans of astronomy between them offer global warming, over-population, terrorism, an asteroid falling to earth and a solar blast as potential reasons to panic.
Prof Brown told the Scotsman: "The threats Lord Rees and myself will be talking about are dangerous in different ways.
"Asteroids fall to earth on average 10-100 million years apart. It's been 65 million years since the last one, so one could happen next week to 60 million years from now.
"The probability in our lifetime is very small, making it low risk, high consequence.
"There's more risk of a solar blast than an giant asteroid falling, but it would not have such high consequences."
Lord Rees said: "We can't rule out by mid-century a global political realignment heading to a stand-off between new superpowers, that could be handled less well or less luckily than the Cuban missile crisis was.
"Moreover, al-Qaeda-style terrorists might some day acquire a nuclear weapon.
"If they did, they would willingly detonate it in a city, killing tens of thousands of along with themselves, and millions would acclaim them as heroes."
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Going Out With a Big Bang
scotsman - Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, will set out his view that human civilisation has only a 50 per cent chance of surviving until 2100 without suffering a catastrophic event. He will be joined in a discussion with Professor John Brown, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, in a session cheerfully entitled: Fire in the Sky: Cosmic Threats to Earth.
Four years ago the world was brought face to face with a phenomenon that the author Nicholas Taleb described as a "Black Swan event": a once-in-a-century financial crash. The banking crisis woke us up to the dangers of dismissing seemingly rare Black Swan events. But now, with barely four months of the year gone, we have had a massive earthquake in Japan, unpredicted turmoil in the Middle East and soaring oil prices.
Prof Brown's assessment that while giant asteroids crashing to earth are on average 60 to 100 million years apart, the last one was 65 million years ago "so one could happen in the next week, or 60 million years from now". A narrowing of this risk span would surely be welcome. But on second thoughts, would it really?
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