Humans must leave Earth to survive, says Hawking

Mankind will need to venture far beyond planet Earth to ensure the long-term survival of our species, according to the world's best known scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking.

Prof Hawking said that space rockets propelled by the kind of matter/antimatter annihilation technology used in Star Trek would be needed to colonise hospitable planets orbiting other stars.

He told BBC radio that scientists may be within 20 years of reaching his prediction that mankind would one day “know the mind of God” by understanding all the laws which govern the universe.

And he said that this knowledge may be vital to the human race’s continued existence.

“The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet,” he said.

“Disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe.

“There isn’t anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star.

Source

I've been thinking about this as well, our earth has almost been entirely exhausted and thus we must find a ''new'' earth. What would it be great if we'd stop throwing away money by playing little war games in Iraq and invest this money in space exploration.

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.

Ah... you guys aren't getting it.

Hawkings isn't saying we need to leave the Earth right now. He's saying that as long as we're confined to this single rock, the life span of our species is directly tied to that of the planet. Earth WILL die one day. It's inevitable.

Quick list of things that could kill the Earth:
- It could be struck by a massive celesital object (comet, astoroid, rogue planet, or some other big chunk of rock) which would breach our orbit, sending us flying into deep space or falling into the sun (unpleasent either way).
- We could take a "squirt" from a pulsar which would delever enough radiation to flash-cook everything on the surface AND blow away our atmosphear.
- Our solar system could be eaten by a blackhole (which is looking like a higher and high possibility). BBC Black Hole Vid

Even if we are lucky and managed to avoid all that, one day our sun will die. Most likely it will go nova and burn so hot that the entire surface of our planet will be liquified. It could expand so much that it's raidus would evelop Mercury (which would cese to exist at all, of cource).

SO... if we're stuck only on this rock of ours, when it dies, so do we.
We aren't talking about tomorrow. We aren't talking in a hundred years... we're talking hundreds of thousands or even billions of years (the sun is only expected to last for another five billion years or so).

This sounds like a rediculous amount of time... but it remains true that if the human race is to exist forever, we must move beyond our solarsystem.

By establishing a selfsuficent colony on Mars, we could extend our chances of survivel by quite a bit. It wouldn't be possible for one big chunk of rock (alnog with a bit of bad luck) to wipe out the whole of mankind. Still... when the sun goes, so does Earth, Mars, and the rest of the solarsystem.

Is this making sence?

[edit on 8-12-2006 by BitRaiser]

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.