Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space

neutralino writes "The Associated Press reports that astrophysicist Stephen Hawking wants humans to establish colonies in space in order to ensure the survival of the human race. At a news conference in Hong Kong, Hawking said that 'It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species. Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.'"

Comments

Re:The irony is

[hackwrench]

I think that may be his wife:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hawking#Illnes s
He and his nurse, Elaine Mason, were married in 1995.

They seriously need to work on the section headings though... Much of his personal life is filed under Illness.

Re:The irony is

[imyourfoot]

Don't know if it's where you read it, but Asimov's The Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire deal with pretty much that exact situation.

Re:Right now?

[TuringTest]

The idea of a world where things like money are obsolete? A simply amazing thing.

Haven't you been paying attention lately? We might already be at that world. Economists are speaking of the Economy of Attention (1, 2, 3) as the natural economic laws of Internet. As online human attention is a scarce resource, it may actually be more valuable than, say, a bunch of metal discs (or paper rectangles) with a face on them.

Of course, that can also mean that we will place the value of 15 min. of fame above the hunger of our neighbors. But it can also be a change on the way things are done nowadays. Gossip magazines point to the first, GPL to the second.

Re:No, not now. But "soon".

[thegarbageman]

The Sun will not go nova. It does not have enough mass to create the gravitional force required for carbon fusion. Though, it will become a red giant with a radius of about 1 AU in about 5 billion years. It will then shed its outer layers and become a white dwarf. A supernova requires a star of about 8 times the mass of our Sun. After the supernova explosion (fusion of elements heavier than iron), if the core is still about 3 or more times the mass of out Sun, it will become a black hole, otherwise a neutron star.

Re:Right now?

[JohnFluxx]

Oh jeez, give me a break. They are made naturally all the time in our atmosphere. Do you have any idea how much energy cosmos radiation has?

Not to mention the hot plasmas that jump between the North and South poles - the particles travelling so fast that they go from one end of the Earth, to hundreds of miles out, then back in to the other end of the Earth all within a few seconds. Imagine that. Seriously.

We can't yet approach the energies that we see around us.

Re:Poor solution

[Twisted64]

Unlike our navel-contemplating planet co-squatters in the East...

This is just ridiculous. Do you recall what 50s sci-fi looked like? Weird clothes, strange household devices, robots for the rich, little round cars. When was the last time you went to a restaurant and used your mobile phone to pay the bill? Admittedly, Japan, Korea, etc have the advantage of a high-density population, so that whatever you want to supply, you can just as easily supply to thousands as hundreds of people. So why not millions? They have cheap high-speed internet, and all kinds of incredible gadgets. They're living the way we envisaged we would be, and we scoff at them for it.