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

[gronofer]

Or accept that it's perhaps better that humans don't survive.

Go back to your video games and Star Trek, people.

Re:Right now?

[tinker_taylor]

Unfortunately, the Human race has a mode of existence akin to Cancer cells (if there were to be a creature much larger than us -- as we are compared to cancer cells -- we'd look like cancer cells to them).

Sure, go into space and spread the disease of greed, over-consumption, mindless materialism -- instead of trying to fix things and harmonize with nature (right here on Earth first)! :\

Is Hawking...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...an expert on space exploration? Or even just exploration? Is he an expert on predicting political and economic events? Does he have a proven track record in past socio-political events leading up to migrations? Is he an expert in space engineering? In organizing colonization? Is he any of these things? He's pretty good at physics and mathematics? (Though I have to say it took him a long time to figure out that information isn't lost at the event horizon so he's not that good.) Is there any crossover from these skills to the other domains of expertise that I mention?

If not, then why is his opinion being so widely reported?