| Millennium: | 3rd millennium |
| Centuries: | 20th century - 21st century - 22nd century |
| Decades: | 1990s 2000s 2010s - 2020s - 2030s 2040s 2050s |
| Years: | 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 |
The 2020s is the 3rd decade of the 21st century of the Anno Domini (common) era. It will begin on January 1, 2020 and end on December 31, 2029.
By the end of the decade, world population is projected to surpass 8 billion people.1
Almost all of Generation Z will be in adulthood by the year 2025 and the first members of the next generation after Generation Z will become teenagers.
Notable predictions and known events
- Solar scientistswho? predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries.citation needed
- According to the Aurora programme roadmap, the European Space Agency will send a manned mission to the Moon in 2020.
- By mid-decade, Alpine glaciers are likely to contain only half their 1970's volume.2unreliable source?
- According to a report released by the National Intelligence Council, the United States will experience the relative decline of its economic and military power, driven both by the rise of new behemoths such as China and India and domestic constraints on its global leadership.3
- Voyager 2 is expected to stop transmitting back to Earth in the 2020s4
- Futurist Ray Kurzweil puts 2029 as the year most likely for a breakthrough in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He expects that around this time, computers will reach human intelligence levels, and shortly thereafter surpass the capabilities of the human brain.5
- Intel predicts the performance of supercomputers to reach zettaflops scale by 2029.6
References
- ^ see various projections and sources at World population estimates
- ^ peopleandplanet.net > climate change > features > ice is melting everywhere
- ^ Finn, Peter; Pincus, Walter (2008-11-21). “Report Sees Nuclear Arms, Scarce Resources as Seeds of Global Instability”, Washington Post.
- ^ "Voyager – Spacecraft – Spacecraft Lifetime". NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2003-01-14). Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
- ^ Briggs, Helen (2008-02-16). "Machines 'to match man by 2029'", BBC News.
- ^ "IDF: Intel says Moore's Law holds until 2029", Heise Online (2008-04-04).