Stephen Hawking, brilliant astrophysicist and nefarious alien doomsday prophet, is again atop his soapbox preaching the end of humanity should we not board spaceships and colonise the solar system and beyond.
He’s made the “get your arse to Mars or anywhere else but earth, humanity or die” prophecy claim before, mind you, but this time around he’s fine tuned it with a time range: two centuries.
As in, if we can manage to survive on this rock for another two centuries without annihilating ourselves, we will stand a good chance at colonising space and surviving even longer.
“The human race shouldn’t have all its eggs in one basket or on one planet. Let’s hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load,” he said in an interview with BigThink:
Honestly, does this guy have stock in some interstellar travel agency we don’t know about? [CNET]
Ash
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 10:24 AMI whole heartedly agree with S Hawking on this. The short article above grabs the important phrases and points (even if the last line is a bit derogatory for humour reasons). The fact that Humans were last on the moon when I was 6 months old and have wasted that time shooting at each other is part of his desire to encourage us to hurry up (and it’s not just about man made catastophies). Anything happens to Earth that we don’t survive it’s adios, but if we at least colonise the Moon, Mars and eventually beyond our percentages of survival into the distant future increase dramatically.
olearymo
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 10:31 AMGET YO ASS TO MAAAAS
Simon Reidy
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 11:55 AM“Two weeks”
scott
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 1:17 PMFind a huge asteriod. Hollow it out and fling it at a star with planets orbiting it. Job done
heredownunder
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 1:35 PMIf we are going to send people to colonise other planets, can we please send Justin Bieber first, and anyone who follows him? Any planet, it does not matter.
Mark Riethmuller
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 2:53 PMAnd who exactly is volunteering to live on a giant, lifeless red rock?
Is it just me, or does Hawking has Professor X tendencies?
Mark Riethmuller
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 2:54 PM*have
matt
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 3:13 PMheh, that’s funny… that’s exactly what I said when Anna Bligh said she’d give 3k to any Queensland who moved out of the south east…
simon
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 3:11 PMI think this guy forgot a key element here – propulsion.
Someone please explain the simple logistics of fuel and moving 100 thousand tonnes of shit to build somewhere else.
And shotgun. Ive got dibs on Europa. Submarining around…
fingerbeats
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 4:33 PMWhat’s the point of moving to another planet if we are probably just going to f*ck that one up too? Shouldn’t we concentrate on fixing the problems here first?
matt
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 5:47 PMas said above, mars is a giant, lifeless, red rock. there isn’t anything to f**k up.
also. no.
not if we spend all that time finally fixing the earth just to have it randomly demolished by a piece of space junk… random super nova, black hole, hell, even a random sun storm like the one we just had, but a bit more powerful – so instead of loosing our mobile signals, we get vaporised – there are so many things that could got wrong.
remember, this is coming from a guy who understands all the things that can go wrong in the universe – not least of all, domestic, man made problems – and with regards to earth, believes there are plenty more where it came from.
Ash
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 5:53 PMWell the point is “fingerbeats” even if we fix the problems here, we are still vulnerable to any number of catastrophies that could extinguish life. And yes, perhaps we will ‘f*ck that one up too’ 2 or 3 times before being more symbiotic rather than parasitic towards what ever planets we inhabit. Even if we do “fix” some of the issues here, it’s simply a case of risk management. It’s also not a case of “Concentrating” on one or the other, more about exploring options and encouraging people/governments to instead of spending a third of their budgets on devices that kill us (“defence”) but on Science (I use the term ‘Science’ very broadly) to help us “survive”.
As for propulsion, well I think the 2 century window Hawking has proposed is plenty enough for 7 billion brains to be creative enough to over come some of those challenges. But not investing anything in exploring ideas in this vein, is folly.
Dakka
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 5:57 PMi dont see any problems that can be solved.
so take your misguided views elce where, naby to venus, some college hippy told me thats where you should go, because they are never wrong.
little tezza
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 7:24 PMyes i think he is right and now is the time man needs to have a purpose and moon and mars are it i wanted to put satilites on the back ok asteroides and let the pop of the back every so often just to see whats on the other side of the solar system so at least we will know witch way to go .
i imagined a gigantic electronic gun in space pulsating cargo across the universe and remotly controled robots going at incredible speeds question
in space if your ship is doing 10000mph what about the personwould they be afected by inerta
DK_Son
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 12:16 PMAll those words and no lip movement….
This guy would be a beast ventriloquist.
Tracy
Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 9:19 PMIt seems that Stephen Hawking has seen sci-fi movie “PROXIMA” and he made note:
http://www.carlosatanes.com/stephen_hawking_science_fiction.html