Hawking: Mankind has 1,000 years to escape Earth

Renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking warns human beings won’t survive “without escaping” from the “fragile” planet. His gloomy forecast is people will become extinct on Earth within current the millennium.

Speaking at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles the 71-year-old scientist called for further exploration of space to guarantee the future of mankind, the Belfast Telegraph reports.

"We must continue to go into space for humanity. If you understand how the universe operates, you control it in a way," Professor Hawking said, adding that "we won't survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet."

Space exploration has however been struggling with the global financial crisis and has too proven subject to spending cuts. In particular NASA's planetary science budget, which is seen as crucial to finding habitable planets, was slashed by $300 million this year.

At the same time, the Mars race has not been abandoned.

On Monday NASA concluded from Curiosity Rover’s findings that the red planet is gradually turning cold after losing a large part of its original atmosphere.

Russia, in its turn, has signed a deal with the European Space Agency to become a full-fledged partner in the ExoMars project, a new attempt to discover if there is life on Mars and eventually send a manned mission there. In 2010 and 2011, the Mars-500 experiment was carried out in Moscow: a group of six volunteers were locked inside a simulated spacecraft for 520 days – the time it would take to make a round trip to the planet.

Back at the LA Medical Center, Hawking was touring a stem cell lab, which is focused on trying to slow the progression of Lou Gehrig's disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He’s been suffering the incurable ailment, which attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control the muscles, for 50 years.

Director of Cedars-Sinai's ALS program, Dr. Robert Baloh, has admitted that he is unable to explain Hawking’s longevity, because people rarely live more than a dozen years with this diagnosis.

“But 50 years is unusual, to say the least," Baloh said.

Hawking was diagnosed with the neurological disorder while a student at Cambridge University at the age of 21. He is confined to a wheelchair and needs permanent assistance. The only movement he is able to do on his own is to twitch the cheek. He communicates with the rest of the world by means of the built-in wheelchair computer, which conveys the owner’s thoughts by a monotonous robot’s voice.

"However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at," Hawking added speaking of dealing with his health condition.

Despite his grave diagnosis, Professor Hawking has remained active. In 2007, he floated like an astronaut on an aircraft that creates zero-gravity by making parabolic dives.

Hawking spent his career on decoding the Universe, working on black holes and the origin of matter. The Professor brought his esoteric physics concepts to the masses through his books, including “A Brief History of Time” published in 1988, which was sold 10 million copies worldwide.

From: rt.com...

To me the earth is like an egg for humanity; it provides sustenance for the embryo until grown enough to survive on it's own wits. If we do not get off our "egg" then all that humanity has thought, written, and achieved will be for naught and but ashes in the cosmos some future day.

Well we went from the Wright Brothers to Neil Armstrong in less than 100 years so it shouldn't be much of an issue.


Come onnnnn cold fusion (or some other technology, guess we'll see once the oil runs dry and massive corporations stop impeding the progress of alternative fuels)

reply to post by theone88


The future of space travel is in the commercial space industry. Government organizations are still going to be involved, of course. There are three out there that I have been studying in my Human Space Flight class.

SpaceX

Bigelow Aerospace

Planetary Resources

I actually have to write a 12 page research paper on the future of Space Stations, focusing outside of low earth orbit. Fun stuff... ;-/

He's one man, he has an opinion, I say nonsense - we're both equally right. Why to people hang on his words as if he speaks for god, or is god?

No Not really, Humans will consume everything like a virus, until they run dry, then earth will clean the slate off and restart.

Our goal now is to keep our show going for long as possible before earth closes its curtains on us. But people are not helping.

Originally posted by crankyoldman
He's one man, he has an opinion, I say nonsense - we're both equally right. Why to people hang on his words as if he speaks for god, or is god?

I believe he earned that respect... you I don't know about.

I think Hawking is losing it. The only way mankind will be wiped off earth is if some event that is so big that no one can live on the surface of earth and we haven't made livable underground cities which has already been done. Lets says we can't breathe the air anymore how would that be any different than living on mars? Well for one thing if we couldn't breathe the air at least the temp here on earth is livable. I'm sure if there was some super event there wouldn't be as many humans left on the planet, but none? Either Hawking is losing it or someone else is typing the words on his keyboard.

Maybe Hawking is saying this, so that humanity can focus more unto space exploration instead of politics and war. When scientist like him say these kind of things, they are taken more serious because they belong to the world most famous and intelligent scientist.

Its all a matter of long term survival, and not putting all our eggs in one basket.
Hawking is right on that one, although I was a little surprised by his short time range (1000 years).

Be it natural or man-made disaster, sure some will "survive" in bunkers and whatnot, but I think our specie is really destined to be a space faring civilization after all.

Now if we could just stop fighting and start building.

reply to post by theone88


Alright, I don't necessarily disagree with Hawking's conclusion. I mean, if we aren't going colonize space, we should at least explore it before humanity kicks the collective bucket. Based on some climate change models (or even some disasters that may not even have human causes (think super-volcanoes, asteroid, large meteorite strikes, gamma radiation bursts, loss in ozone, nasty virus)--we could feasibly be on are way our by the end of the century. But, he strikes me as a little too confident about his numbers--I mean what specific information does he have that we'll be gone by the end of this particular millenia?

Hes right on....
Another thousand years of spiraling pollution, and nuclear waste piling up.......
The planet will be irradiated in large disaster event....
We are talking hundreds of nuclear power plants out there now....all pumping out nuclear wastes we dont know what to do about....
The Great Die Off is in full swing....whats to say humans arent on that list somewhere after the bees or whatever.....?

I find Hawking very interesting.
But, the thought just occured to me, when did we invent computers that could 'read' someone's thoughts and then transmit them with a robotic voice?!

Did i miss something somewhere?

Surely, if we had such an invention there would be no need for the police to interrogate someone for a crime, they could just 'plug into' their suspect's mind and get answers directly from the 'horse's mouth' so to speak.

when did this invention come about and how come it is not available for all people in the Professor's situation?

so this from the man that said, that if et comes they'll kick our a@@. just paraphrasing.

here's a link that says more, google it and you'll get about 4million hits.

The aliens in Hawking's vision would be much like the malefic beasties in the blockbuster science-fiction flick Independence Day. He describes, "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach." He says that humans should try to avoid alien contact as we colonize space. He states that such contact would be "a little too risky". What would result? He states, "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans."

from this linkStephen Hawking Says Aliens Probably Out There, Will Want to Conquer Us
so what does he propose we do out there when we meet them.

reply to post by theone88


I love Dr Hawking, what a special human being. His truth is infinite.

Originally posted by Elliot
I find Hawking very interesting.
But, the thought just occured to me, when did we invent computers that could 'read' someone's thoughts and then transmit them with a robotic voice?!

Did i miss something somewhere?

Surely, if we had such an invention there would be no need for the police to interrogate someone for a crime, they could just 'plug into' their suspect's mind and get answers directly from the 'horse's mouth' so to speak.

when did this invention come about and how come it is not available for all people in the Professor's situation?

Elliot,

Believe it or not, that exact questions entered my mind sometime in the not-too-distant-past. And here is the answers from the man himself:

"Before the operation, my speech had been getting more slurred, so that only a few people who knew me well, could understand me. But at least I could communicate. I wrote scientific papers by dictating to a secretary, and I gave seminars through an interpreter, who repeated my words more clearly. However, the tracheotomy operation removed my ability to speak altogether. For a time, the only way I could communicate was to spell out words letter by letter, by raising my eyebrows when someone pointed to the right letter on a spelling card. It is pretty difficult to carry on a conversation like that, let alone write a scientific paper. However, a computer expert in California, called Walt Woltosz, heard of my plight. He sent me a computer program he had written, called Equalizer. This allowed me to select words from a series of menus on the screen, by pressing a switch in my hand. The program could also be controlled by a switch, operated by head or eye movement. When I have built up what I want to say, I can send it to a speech synthesizer. At first, I just ran the Equalizer program on a desk top computer.
However David Mason, of Cambridge Adaptive Communication, fitted a small portable computer and a speech synthesizer to my wheel chair. This system allowed me to communicate much better than I could before. I can manage up to 15 words a minute. I can either speak what I have written, or save it to disk. I can then print it out, or call it back and speak it sentence by sentence. Using this system, I have written a book, and dozens of scientific papers. I have also given many scientific and popular talks. They have all been well received. I think that is in a large part due to the quality of the speech synthesiser, which is made by Speech Plus. One's voice is very important. If you have a slurred voice, people are likely to treat you as mentally deficient: Does he take sugar? This synthesiser is by far the best I have heard, because it varies the intonation, and doesn't speak like a Dalek. The only trouble is that it gives me an American accent"

Link: wiki.answers.com...

(The wiki-answer page notes that the quote was from Hawking's webpage, in case you were (understandably) looking for a more substantial source)

reply to post by theone88


What im about to say is not meant to be mean. Hawking is a DOWNER about everything he publishes, if he ever put out 1 positive word regarding earth or its inhabitants i could possibly believe him for kbow he's like a republican everthing he says is negetive.

there was a study done awhile back, it was large sealed room filled with a carboard city. The city was built for rats, everyday a fixed amount of food and water was added to the room, initially the population was small but with no predators it grew exponentially. As over crowding set in, aggression traits emerged. And pretty soon with limited food and resources, the rats started feeding on each other. In a nutshell, the eart is our room, and we are the rats. Our population curves are parabolic, and resource utilization is parabolic, eventually if we dont escape the room(earth), we will destroy ourselves.

reply to post by Biotech2024


I agree, however i highly doubt total distruction of mankind will happen. We always bounce back. What was it some 75000 years back the human population shrunk to like 25000, or vise versa on those numbers. Point here humans bounced back to repeat the repeat of the past. See i found a positive amongst the negative, Hawkins in his genious state should learn to counter his predictions with a positive.

reply to post by theone88

how has he earned the respect to be spoken about as if he is god, does he forgive sins? the man is gifted, have you ever asked where the gift came from???