When the end is nigh, will scientists be able to save the day? Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, the Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk in Cambridge, and other experts explore whether science can predict and prevent the end of the Earth.

Most of the risks we look at for extinction are high impact , but quite low probability. Now, they aren't all, and climate change is an example of one that is quite high probability I think. It’s likely that we will see more global pandemic outbreaks that will cause deaths of millions of people, like the Spanish flu did last century. Then there are things like, for example, it is entirely scientifically plausible that we would be hit by a meteor the likes of which wiped out the dinosaurs. But, the last one of those that hit us was 66 million years ago which, if you think about it, is 660 thousand centuries so the likelihood that it’s going to happen in the next century is vanishingly unlikely.

So we tend to think of ourselves as, in some ways, an insurance policy. When the stakes are so high, when the consequences are so big, we think that some people should be working on these things. It’s not necessarily what everybody in the public should be worried about. In the same way that it would make sense for you to take out insurance in case your house burns down. We shouldn't be worrying about your house burning down all the time, you should just be taking the precautions of not leaving the oven on.

Read the full forum on existential risk and maverick science at The Naked Scientists.