No, the world will not end on November 13, 2026: a 1960 paper was about population maths

A frightening claim is circulating on social media that the world will end on November 13, 2026. Many videos, posts and reports about it have gone viral online. It is also being claimed that around 66 years ago, leading scientists predicted catastrophe on this very date. It is natural for people to be alarmed, and the question is what the truth is.

The matter begins on November 4, 1960, when a research paper was published in the US science journal Science. It was titled "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026". The title is frightening in itself, but what mattered was the mathematics inside.

The paper's author was the Austrian-American physicist Heinz von Foerster. Patricia Mora and Lawrence Amiot also worked with him. All of them worked in the electrical engineering department of the University of Illinois in the US.

The researchers closely examined 24 historical estimates of human population from the start of the Christian era to 1958. To understand how population grows and how fast it would grow in future, they built a complex mathematical model. They found that population does not grow at a steady or bounded rate, but that its pace keeps increasing with time. In scientific terms this is called hyperbolic growth.

The researchers held that humans have a unique ability to communicate with one another, work together and organise with the help of technology. This, they said, is why humans were able to cross nature's limits and increase their numbers rapidly. On the basis of the same equation, they concluded that if this rate of growth continued, the world's population would become "infinite" on November 13, 2026.

In fact, the paper nowhere mentioned any real destruction of the Earth. The scientists did not claim that a large asteroid would strike, an earthquake would occur or a volcano would erupt on that day. The word "Doomsday", or "singularity", was used to describe a hypothetical mathematical condition. In mathematics, a singularity is the point at which the answer to an equation becomes infinite. In the real world, however, there are finite things such as drinking water, limits to grain production and the balance of the environment. Human population can therefore never become infinite. To treat this 1960 model as a prediction of the end of the world is wholly wrong and misleading.

Another reason the issue has returned to discussion is an article by the writer Michel Tackla, published on November 29, 1964 in the Egyptian newspaper Watani. Its title too was linked to the date of November 13, 2026 and the end of the world. An old clipping of that article has recently spread widely on WhatsApp and Facebook. Citing it, some people began linking solar activity, changes in weather and natural disasters to this date.

Events on the Sun such as regular solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME) do affect the Earth's magnetic field. They can cause brief disruption to radio frequencies, satellite communication, GPS and power grids. But according to astronomers, there is no possibility of these wiping out the entire Earth or the human race. The noted astronomer Imad Mujahid has said clearly that there will be no astronomical event on November 13, 2026 that poses a threat to the Earth.