Stephen Hawking Receives Copley Medal

smooth wombat writes "Stephen Hawking, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded the Royal Society's 275th Copley medal for his contribution to cosmology and theoretical physics. Other notables to receive the award, established by Stephen Gray in 1731 'For his new Electrical Experiments', include Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur and Albert Einstein. In his remarks, Professor Hawking reiterated his previous comments that man must colonize other planets. The medal presented to Professor Hawking was sent into space onboard Space Shuttle Discovery and spent some time on the International Space Station in July of this year. Hawking has expressed an interest in going into space and commented, 'My next goal is to go into space, maybe Richard Branson will help me.'"

Comments

Re:I'm embarassed to ask, but--

[davidsyes]

Humans have NO business COLONizing any planets until they conquer:

-- Racism
-- Racist or insensitive investment and reinvestment policies
-- Pestilence
-- Diseases via maldistribution of medicines
-- Poverty
-- Classism
-- Bigotry
-- Rampant corporate fraud
-- Imperialist invasions of negligible countries
-- Waste of non-renewable energy sources
-- Destruction of the Amazon
-- Poising of nuclear and chemical weapons (yeh, still up, and in standby mode) at other countries
-- Duping taxpayers into quasi-fear/Disneyland states to prop up multi-trillion dollar military machines globally...
-- Ghost Planes, illegal "renditions", torture, and more
-- False, corrupt, self-serving news outlets....
-- Gentrification
-- Vote tampering (not just in the US, but in foreign countries by the US and by local corrupt governments...)

(How many TIMES now could have the dirtier, poorer parts of these places been built and RE-built:

Dallas, Chicago, Houston, DC, parts of Atlanta, New New Orleans, Oakland, San Francisco, and on and on and ON?

Fraking idiots would rather play masters of the Universe, sewing hatred, fear, isolationism, racism, drug proliferation and more.

If humans make it to a planet, and try cowboy, expansionist diplomacy, I hope the first crossed, violated other-worlder bombs humans back to proto-protozoa. Maybe re-write the human DNA.

Space and the Cosmos are beautiful. The oceans are wondrous. The forest and all the Earth has to offer are mind-bogglingly mesmerizing, and we temporary residents allow it to be plundered, destroyed and made non-renewable within our lifetimes or our great-great-great-GREAT x10^3 grand children's lifetimes.

Yes Stephen, you're a talented, inspiration, eminent human being, but I wish you could enlighten some of the frakin idiots down on Terra Firma. Please don't again preach the colonization message (or allow suppression of any of your clean up Terra Firma messages I might have missed). There's too much dirt and connotation that will go with it. Humans won't be that enlightened for maybe another 3,000 years.

Thanks, Stephen

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