Can Math Predict the Rise and Fall of Empires? Two maps are side by side.
Both depict Africa, Europe, and Asia in a time lapse: As centuries pass in seconds, red splotches emerge like blood stains spreading across continents, signifying the growth of empires. One map is the progression of actual history. The other, a computer's best guess at how and where on Earth empires should emerge, based on a few key assumptions. To the surprise of Sergey Gavrilets, both simulations are incredibly close. In a study out today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Gavrilets and his colleagues sought to create computer model that could predict the locations where empires would rise based on just three criteria.
Elysium director Neill Blomkamp: 'You'd have to change the human genome to stop wealth discrepancy' Neill Blomkamp has a vision of 2154, and it's not good news.
His prognosis finds Earth in a sorry state: the whole world has become the third world, with the extremely wealthy 1% abandoning our ravaged planet for Elysium, a luxurious space station. Earth is a giant slum, a totalitarian nightmare in which citizens live like rats with Elysium glowing above them, like "Bel Air in space," says Blomkamp. To underline the yawning chasm between the haves and have-nots of his future dystopia, Blomkamp decided that the only contemporary location that could accurately convey the grimness of life on Earth in the 22nd century was the world's second-biggest garbage dump, in Mexico City.