"What's the worst that could happen?" - 16 years ago Robin Hanson said: “Humanity seems to have a bright future, i.e., a non-trivial chance of expanding to fill the universe with lasting life. But the fact that space near us seems dead now tells us that any given piece of dead matter faces an astronomically low chance of begating such a future. There thus exists a great filter between death and expanding lasting life, and humanity faces the ominous question: how far along this filter are we?” : http://hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html

Images:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

"What's the worst that could happen?" - 16 years ago Robin Hanson said: “Humanity seems to have a bright future, i.e., a non-trivial chance of expanding to fill the universe with lasting life. But the fact that space near us seems dead now tells us that any given piece of dead matter faces an astronomically low chance of begating such a future. There thus exists a great filter between death and expanding lasting life, and humanity faces the ominous question: how far along this filter are we?” : http://hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html

Images:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGXpsJYNILg