Meanings
- An early version of the doomsday argument.
Carter chose not to publish on doomsday, discussing it only in seminars where he thought it could get a fair hearing. In this way the doomsday argument began as a secret, almost samizdat doctrine, known to a few as the “Carter catastrophe.”
[2019, William Poundstone, The Doomsday Calculation: How an Equation that Predicts the Future Is Transforming Everything We Know About Life and the Universe, Little, Brown, →ISBN
Origin
Proposed by Cambridge cosmologist Brandon Carter in 1983.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Carter catastrophe. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Carter%20catastrophe
“Carter catastrophe.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Carter%20catastrophe. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Carter catastrophe,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Carter%20catastrophe.
Source: Carter catastrophe on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.