Viral social media claims are warning that November 13, 2026, will mark the end of the world. This bizarre statement comes from a 1960 research paper titled Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026. Published in the journal Science, the article predicted that the human population would approach infinity and annihilate itself on this future date, which is almost a month from now. The article was picked up by several social media handles with a bit of exaggeration, claiming that the world is going to end.
In November 1960, Austrian-born physicist Heinz von Foerster and his research colleagues published a study, arguing that human populations might grow beyond an exponential rate. "Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve," they told the media then. "They will be squeezed to death."
But one can breathe a sigh of relief, as the so-called "doomsday" is apparently a mathematical claim rather than an actual apocalyptic event.
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During the mid-20th century, rapid population growth was a major topic of concern, as people in general were having four children, who went on to have four children of their own. Back then, Von Foerster and his team gathered demographic records spanning over two millennia, from the era of Jesus up to 1958, to analyse how human numbers expanded over time.
When they added the numbers into their mathematical model, the numbers revealed a pattern of "hyper-exponential" growth, as they stated that the population wasn't just growing, but its growth rate was continually speeding up.
By pushing this formula into the future, the equation eventually hit a mathematical "singularity", a point where the numbers reached infinity. And the specific date was November 13, 2026. It was apparently a date chosen in part as a joke, as it happened to fall on von Foerster's birthday.
"For obvious reasons, t0 shall be called 'doomsday', since it is on that date that N (the number of 'elements,' or people) goes to infinity, and the clever population annihilates itself," he told Time Magazine.
The paper aimed to spark serious conversations about resource management and sustainability.
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Why doesn't the prediction mean anything?
Mathematical equations work on strict rules, but human society does not. The 1960 paper treated human population growth as an unchecked curve, assuming that fertility rates and living conditions would remain completely unchanged forever. But in reality, population trends shifted dramatically with time.
With modernisation and urbanisation, birth rates have dropped. The United Nations demographers estimate the global population stands around 8.2 billion people today. According to the current forecasts, the human population will peak at roughly 10 billion in the 2080s before stabilising or gradually declining.
The article also suggests that pushing math models outside their real-world context always produces bizarre results. And in short, there's no need to worry about it, as this year's November 13 will most likely be a normal day.
