Stephen Hawking has warned that unless the human race colonises space within two centuries it will disappear forever.
The astrophysicist says that our only chance for long-term survival is to move away from Earth and begin to inhabit far-flung planets.
In an interview with the website Big Think, Professor Hawking said he was an optimist but the next few hundred years had to be negotiated carefully if humans were to survive.
‘I see great danger for the human race,’ he said. ‘There have been a number of times in the past when survival has been a question of touch and go.
‘The Cuban missile crisis in 1963 is one of these. The frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future. We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully.
‘But I am an optimist. If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries our species should be safe as we spread into space.’
Earlier this year, Professor Hawking warned humans should be wary about trying to make contact with other alien life forms as we could not be sure that they would be friendly.
‘If we are the only intelligent dead’beings in the galaxy we should make sure we survive and continue.’
But he warned that mankind was entering an increasingly dangerous period.
‘Our population and use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially along with our technical ability to change the environment for good and ill,’ said the author of the bestseller, A Brief History of Time.
‘But our genetic code carries selfish and aggressive instincts that were a survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next 100 years let alone the next thousand or a million.
'Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain on planet Earth but to spread into space.
‘We have made remarkable progress in the last 100 years but if we want to continue beyond the next 100 years our future is in space.
via Human race must colonise space or face extinction, warns Stephen Hawking | Mail Online.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Human race must colonise space or face extinction, warns Stephen Hawking
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12 comments:
Nice coupling of news items, Xeno. D.C chaos with Stephen Hawkings singing the lyrics of an old, old song: "we gotta get out of here [if it's last thing we ever do ... ]"
Hawking is being optimistic: "next two centuries." We don't have that much time to play with.
To deny seriousness of global warming, the carbonization of the atmosphere, the acidification of the oceans, loss of oxygen producing forests and phytoplankton in the oceans, the industrial chemicalization of our bodies and of wildlife from the arctic to the antarctic is to be nothing but extremely naive. To ignore the decades-long increasing disparity of wealth and poverty in the United States and many other countries is also dumb.
But, instead of sending a message telling people to wake up and turn this entire industrialized failure we're living in around, Hawking dreams about going to the stars.
Nice going S.H.
I'm not buying what Stephen Hawking is selling.
Firstly I agree completely that we need a backup planet - and if not that, at least we need backup starships.
However, we don't have anywhere near the necessary technology yet. We haven't even yet sent people to Mars let alone colonising some other world.
So we need a lot of technological development first.
We also need willpower and motivation. Moon landings stopped a handful of years after they started because we lost the motivation.
I also think that our species needs to grow up. We should not take our petty squabbles and religious insanity to the stars. Right now more than half the people in USA believe we were created in finished form by a magical sky daddy, rather than evolved from ancestral hominids.
So Stephen Hawking is right, I think, that the next 200 years are crucial. I think we will need at least 200 years to eradicate barbarity like stoning people to death, female and male genital mutilation, solve the infantile Jewish/Muslim squabbles, educate people to passable levels of scientific understanding, logical reasoning and mathematical ability, and start to reverse a lot of the damage we have done to the planet.
Only then do we deserve to colonise the galaxy.
So, actually, you do agree with Hawking. Nice term, by the way: "Magical Sky Daddy." Did you make that up? It's awesome, I'm going to start using it. I REALLY love it. It fits in with some of the terms I use. Like this one: You know when some congregations hold up their hands to "the Lord" during church? I call it their "God Antenna." You are welcome to use that one if you like it.
Hawking thinks much bigger than we do. Though I certainly believe we are incredibly irresponsible with our planet, to believe that human beings will -- or even could -- "turn things around" would just be silly. We did not get to this point (medicine, global communication, etc.) by worrying about the trees (and I agree, that's too bad), and it's way too late to turn back. This is what human beings do, it's part of our evolution. If we can't find a niche, we make a niche. For good or bad, THIS is what separates us from the so-called "lower" animals.
I've been saying for years, now, that we should privatize space exploitation. (My Speech professor corrected me with "exploration" when I said this in his class, and then I corrected /him/, saying something to the effect of what I am about to say here.) Give tax breaks to companies to go out into the nearby planets and mine them, terraform them, whatever. Maybe even subsidize them to some extent. (The U.S. subsidizes farmers to grow food that's not even needed yet, so much so that almost everything is derived from corn in some way or another because it has practically no market value (until someone suggested it could be the new fuel, which it can't be, because our entire crop can only replace a small fraction of gasoline). Subsidizing private enterprise for the good of the general public is nothing new.) The United States, the most powerful single national entity in the world, was founded mostly by people looking to make a profit. Let private companies take the risk. Encourage them to take the risk. In 200 years, human beings will be all over the inner Solar System and colonies will establish themselves. (First a port, then apartments, then convenience stores.) It will happen all by itself, practically, given enough encouragement -- which may come from (drum-roll)... depletion of Earth's most conventional forms of energy. (Depletion of resources has always been a big motivation for humans to leave one area for another.) With so many humans going off-planet in search of better opportunity, the Earth might finally get the well-deserved rest that you and I agree it needs.
I guess I'm just trying to say that expecting human beings to simply do what's right /because/ it is right is just not realistic, it's something we have /never/ done, and Hawking knows this. Anne, you're speaking as an idealist, and I certainly respect you for it. However, human beings have always been pragmatists, and they're likely to remain so for a very long time -- much more than 200 years.
"Hawking thinks much bigger than we do."
From Hollywood actors to "heroes," the idols of Americans, how they so easily influence their thinking: "worrying about the trees" ... really?
Unfortunately, we don't have "200 years."
Sure we do, Ann. It would not be wise to think like that, like we have lots of time, but extinctions do take a long time, even from devastating cataclysms. The current state of the environment has happened before and will likely happen again. We are not quite even a footnote on the history of this planet.
It seems that Stephen Hawking has seen sci-fi movie "PROXIMA" and he made note:
http://www.carlosatanes.com/stephen_hawking_science_fiction.html
Dont buy anyting this retarded idiot is seling you.
His BS has gone on my nerves for years now.
Media claim his label as the smartest person alive, that is so much BS that it make me want to trow up.
I actually feel sorry for this dude, but at the same time I am tired of his BS jackshit.
Before it was the retarded Albert Einstein that "ruled" this planet and now u got this idiot loose, when it is going to end?
I am refering to Albert as a retarded idiot cuz his storry about u cant travel faster than light, that is total bullshit. And now for years this retarded idiot is trying to be someting more than he is, for what? For greed?
Spreading BS to get money for some space programs?
The whole system of a govenment including the science community is just a program of mind controll, a program to controll u in anyway they know and they are good doing it. They are professional in controll us, telling us whatever they like and we buy almost everyting. A large amount of the population buy everyting served.
You will have a more enjoyable life if you look at the roots of your hostility. When you say something cruel to yourself in your head, try immediately saying the reverse. If you stop secretly hating yourself, you won't feel the need to belittle other people.
Disagreement is very useful. Rather than insults, however, give reasons and sources when you disagree.
Also, try the spell check feature in the Firefox web browser. It works for submitting comments on blogs. Some of the words you are using are not words. "Senter" is spelled center, for example. Fair or not, if you misspell words and attack people without giving your evidence, you will be instantly judged as uneducated and your ideas, right or wrong, will be ignored.
Thanks for stopping by and for leaving some comments.
Hey, Ann,
What I mean by "the current state of the environment" is its turning away from what is ideal for us. As you must know, the planet's level of pretty much anything (oxygen, for example) has always been changing and is always going to change. And yes, we are currently experiencing a mass extinction (these are the kinds of extinctions I was referring to before but failed to be clear, sorry) in which human beings are not likely to survive. So where do we disagree? (By the way, if I am wrong, and for some reason you actually do contest that the planet has always been changing, go pick up any modern geology book at a local source and check for yourself... but I'm sure you just didn't know what time frame I meant because I wasn't clear about it, so you probably don't need to do that.)
Human beings are really not evolving much anymore, and we really haven't much since we figured out how to tamper with the world around us. The only thing about us that has improved is our mind (and that is debatable, since that has allowed us the ability to tamper with a system that is larger than we can even imagine); we are physically weaker than we have ever been (and that includes our immune system). No matter what human beings do, the Earth is going to change and we will do our very best NOT to change with it because that's how we are. For us to change along with the planet, we'd have to give up everything and go back into the woods. No more global network, no more medicine, no more sunblock, no more air-conditioning, blah, blah, blah. We're just not going to do that, Ann. You know we will not.
I am with you, though, that there are a lot of things we could do differently that would lessen our impact. We waste so much in so many ways. However, the inevitable truth is that, if we are here long enough, we will have to leave to survive, and considering how many mass extinctions that have occurred due to no human impact whatsoever (for there were no such thing as a human in those times, much less an industrial revolution), you've got to realize that, if we are already in a mass extinction, our options for survival are actually pretty limited, and one good disaster might be all that is needed to finish us off. That's another thing about mass extinctions, by the way: Whichever group is on the top of the chain doesn't stay there. Ever. Therefore, I believe Hawking is right: Hedge your bets. If you want your great-great grand-kids to have a chance to survive the next impact, or the Yellowstone Caldera eruption, or the next great plague, or even the next great war, then give them somewhere to run.
Robert, Einstein's equation prevents anything from accelerating to or beyond the speed of light. However, it is an EQUATION. He was well aware that there are many things faster than light, and if you'd ever read anything about him you'd know he was uneasy about this incongruity, but that was about as far as he could go. Just the same, the equation has really been quite handy in the meantime between his creation of it and modern times when other areas of physics are doing better jobs describing the Universe.
Just so you know, Robert, it's not effective in making your point at all by "disproving" a body of work that's 105 years old. In the future it may help you to know that Darwin wouldn't recognize modern evolution, either. Also, the Wright Brothers would be absolutely astounded by modern avionics.
See? Just silly.
Backup planet? Backup starships? Look... the question is....
WHY WHY WHY do we need the human race to continue on? It is slowly dies of extinction.... THAT'S NATURE! Why spread our detritus through the galaxy anyway? The human species evolves, and if, say if an asteroid is about to wipe out the planet and we have the technology to send out a few to space, what about the other billions left on the planet. A VERY POOR IDEA here!
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