At this point I think the best we can do is shoot off some DNA into space with the hope to seed some primordial ooze somewhere else. There is no way we can bug-out from Earth. We'd need a whole lotta' help from the aliens and, considering the painful evil things they are doing to humans, I doubt we can count on them helping. Unless they view us as a food source .. then I'm sure they'd be more than happy to start some human herds elsewhere.

It makes basic sence.

As long as we remain restrained upon this ball of rock we call Earth, our specie's lifespan is tied to that of Earth. If we move out into the solar system, our specie's lifespan is still tied to that of the Sun.

Only when we can inhabit (infest?) other starsystems can our species be sure to have a lifespan that is not limited by stellar events.

Think of it in terms of viral reproduction. When a virus infects a hoast, it's lifespan becomes tied to that of the hoast. If the hoast dies, the virus is done for. It's only long term survival strategy is to infect new hoast while mitigating the damage it does to it's current one. This is why the common cold and non-leathal flu strains are amoung the most sucsesful biological entities on the face of our planet. They colonize quickly and don't destroy their resource bases.

I wrote a paper on this subject while in grade 10. It earned me some odd looks and comments from my teachers.

Most of Earth's land is un-inhabited. Most of our water has been generally un-touched. We are basing our "doomed Earth" assumptions on our polluted cities. You have to realize, our cities are a very very small portion of our entire planet. Our planet's condition is nowhere near as bad as people in our government and media want us to believe. It's fear mongering is what it is. Global Warming is not as bad as they claim. They want to claim "It's the warmest it's been in blah blah blah years" Yeah, and how long, compared to the life span of the Earth, have we had censors capable of monitoring the global temperature? That data is very little compared to the Earth's history. The Earth goes through changes. It has it's up times and down times. It's a living thing too. Just as humans have their up and down times, their sick and well times, the Earth does too.

Again, we are nowhere near as bad as those people want us to believe, and definately nowhere near the point of having to abandon the planet.

We spend a ton on space exploration, yet, as of now, we aren't even able to put a man on Mars, much less get to another "Earth-like" planet. So, even if we had to abandon Earth right now, there's nothing we could do. I guess we'd just have to accept our fate and wait for our destruction.

I'm all for our destruction, by the way. It's actually a cleansing thought if you think about it. Destroy all the world scum and issues in one big boom. Bring it on!

[edit on 12/8/2006 by TheyAreWatching]

To me, this makes no sense at all. Forgive me all you posters who have fantasies of space travel and exploring new worlds. I see exploration as a good thing like when you discover some new stuff that you never knew before, but it isn't a solution to problems.

Hawkins may know something (what he knows I am not sure of), but to suggest that we have to leave earth and find another home because we messed this one up is a load of garbage.

The premise of finding a new home because we cannot manage the one we are on is like saying I live like a bum and ruin my own environment so I must find a new planet in some other solar system that will make life habitable for a time. Eventually humans will mess that one up to if they find it in theory.

The solution is not to necessarily find another house to live in, but to be resourceful enough to make the one we have work. Unfortunately, we cannot do that because our leadership is crap. Finding new worlds to live isn't going to change the fact that we aren't good at manageing the one we already are on.

Just my 2cents.

Originally posted by BitRaiser
By establishing a selfsuficent colony on Mars, we could extend our chances of survivel by quite a bit.

Oh the irony! We probably started out over there as microbes anyways.
Going back to where we started! Either that, or we were on the planet that was between Mars and Jupiter that is now nothing more than a pile of space debris.

We are probably jumping from planet to planet in our solar system ... destroying planets along the way.

We will probably try to terraform venus or mars before we do anything else.

The great thing about being a scientist of Hawking's stature is that you can make comments about things that you are no better qualified to discuss than the common man, and people read too much into it and take it too seriously. Hawkings may know about black holes, but his knowledge of ecology, biology, and politics is no more advanced than the next guy.

The whole thing reminds me of Carl Sagan talking about UFO"s or Linus Pauling spouting the virtues of Vitamin C.

It's basic common sense.

Earth dies = humanities dies.
Earth WILL die sometime.

Is that really all that complex a notion?

It's happen... eventually.
It wont occur because of some abstract desire to Colonize the Universe and Save Mankind.
It will occur when the technology is right, and the economic incentive is there.

The great discovery voyages to America and Australia were that way. Searching for Economic Gain.

Just be patient. It will happen when the time is right. Unfortunately I will be long dead by then.