In 1960, scientists predicted the world would end on November 13, 2026

In exactly a month, on November 13, 2026, the world will end. Fittingly, our impending apocalypse falls on Friday the 13th. At least, that was the prediction made by University of Illinois physicist Heinz von Foerster in a highly cited Science paper published in 1960. Though talks of supposed doomsday have renewed in recent months thanks to hyperbolic anxieties over runaway, sentient artificial intelligence, von Foerster had a much different calamity in mind. For more than a century, t