‘dinosaur event’. It wouldn’t wipe out the planet, but it would
probably wipe out humanity.”
“Would you tell people it’s coming?”
“Absolutely,” Schmidt replies. “They’d igure it out soon
enough. Do you think I’m going to keep it a secret? My guess
is with modern technology you’d probably have at least a year’s
notice.”
“That’s nice to know.”
“I should say,” Schmidt adds, “that the chance of this
happening is extraordinarily unlikely. When I say extraordi-
narily, I mean the chance is about the same as being hit by light-
ning in a clear sky. But if it were to happen, the worst possible
case would be a direct hit, coming in as a normal comet, getting
caught by Jupiter and then going into an orbit with a much
higher chance of crossing the Earth. Then we might have 20,
30, 100 or 1000 years notice. If we have 100 years notice we
could probably solve those problems. Most threats we could
mediate, but not all.”
“What’s the nightmare scenario?”
“Almost all of them are to do with humans. But as far as
astrophysics goes, you have a very unlikely situation of a gamma
ray pointing at us that would ionise our atmosphere, probablykilling off half the planet. Boom! You’ll
have no notice when that happens but
the odds are about one in a billion. It’s
very unlikely.”
I ix his gaze and plump for an “out
of the box” question. “What do you
think about the idea that we may have
more in common with aliens then is
commonly believed?”
“There’s no evidence. The reason I
say you shouldn’t believe in us being
evolved from aliens is down to DNA.
Look at ours and compare it to apes.
There’s so much in common. It’s a tiny
change between an ape and us. So
consequently there’s not much else to
believe. The changes just happened over
time.”
“Who do you see yourself as having
most in common with: Darth Vader,
Luke Skywalker or Captain Kirk?”
It’s funny; the most lippant question garners the most
serious expression before Schmidt replies.
“I’m deinitely not Darth Vader. Darth Vader went through
a bad patch, and I wouldn’t want to have that on my conscience.
I was always a Mr Spock-type of guy but I’ll pick Luke
Skywalker. Well, he’s not really like me but he always tried
hard. He failed a couple of times but he’s an ordinary guy and
that’s why I like Luke. He’s kind of an ordinary guy doing
extraordinary things.
“That’s the same as most Nobel Prize winners – ordinary
people doing extraordinary things. My high school teacher was
like, ‘You were good, but you were no better than anyone else!’
And the answer is, he was right. I wasn’t. What did I do? I
continued to work, I learnt and I was in the right place in space
and time to be part of something great.
“Almost everything humankind has achieved isn’t a result of
super people like Einstein. He probably was really super, but
there are very, very few people like him.
“You can work alone but I’ve always said it’s better to work
in teams and have 100 people there. When something bad
happens you have 99 people to pick you up. If it’s all “me versus
you,” you have 99 people to crush you when you’re down because
they hate your guts. Humans work amazingly well together,
and that’s how I think Luke Skywalker led, by being a normal
person.”
I sit back and look up at the sky. I for one would follow this man
against the Dark Side or even, if he decides, to the polling booth.
He certainly isn’t a normal person. He’s a damn ine one.
Jay Furby is a freelance writer.30 | MAY 2016
“My high school teacher was like,
‘You were good, but you were no
better than anyone else!’ And the
answer is, he was right. I wasn’t.”Credit: Juliet Taylor