Stephen Hawking Warns Against Confining Ourselves To Earth

alancronin writes with this excerpt from CNet: "Stephen Hawking, one of the world's greatest physicists and cosmologists, is once again warning his fellow humans that our extinction is on the horizon unless we figure out a way to live in space. Not known for conspiracy theories, Hawking's rationale is that the Earth is far too delicate a planet to continue to withstand the barrage of human battering. 'We must continue to go into space for humanity,' Hawking said today, according to the Los Angeles Times. 'We won't survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet.'"

Comments

Earth isn't delicate,

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans are. Earth will continue even in an environment not hospitable to us, and life too will probably go on.

Re: Earth isn't delicate,

[Anonymous Coward]

Earth, as a system for sustaining human life, most certainly is delicate. Which would be what Stephen Hawking is talking about, and what you should be concerned about. Whether or not there are rotifers once we've managed to murder ourselves is something of an academic question.

Re: Earth isn't delicate,

[gatkinso]

So let's just become a horde of locusts jumping from planet to planet consuming their resources and polluting them into lifeless rocks until a coalition of alien species has to band together to eliminate the threat humanity represents to the galaxy.

Or, learn how to survive on this planet before going out and colonizing another one.

Re: Earth isn't delicate,

[Jason1729]

Yes, I'm aware this is slashdot, but not everyone is happy living in their parents basement. For your own sake, try to stay off the internet for a little while and see what the world is really like.

Re: Earth isn't delicate,

[Smallpond]

People don't need planets to live. Or, at least, not to live on. Lagrange points to anchor habitats are a nice touch. Give me low G, controlled weather, and no Mosquitos any day. Get us out of 'natural' ( ignoring the natural/unnatural false dichotomy) environments and in to ones designed by engineers to handle hard human loving.

Yes. Because when you think about luxurious comfort "designed by engineers" is the first thing that comes to mind.

Re: Earth isn't delicate,

[Intrepid imaginaut]

What misanthropic crap. We can survive on this planet just fine, despite this planet's repeated, persistent, and very nearly successful efforts to wipe us out many times throughout history. The realisation of what we were doing to the biosphere has been slow in coming but I'm greatly encouraged by recent developments. Mother nature has done far worse before we humans ever made an appearance, and in case you've forgotten, the fate of the planet and all its glorious diversity WITHOUT humanity is to become cold stellar dust.

We are also the first and perhaps only living beings to have adapted sufficiently to the environment to be able to go into space, and like it or not that makes us special. We do need to take advantage of that.

Re: Earth isn't delicate,

[hawguy]

Or, learn how to survive on this planet before going out and colonizing another one.

There are things that could happen that would make it very difficult if not impossible to survive on this planet no matter how much we've learned about surviving. Like a supervolcano eruption putting enough ash in the air to shade the entire planet, sudden release of ocean methane stores, a large asteroid strike, etc.

Any of these events are unlikely, but any of them could happen tomorrow. Even if they don't lead to extinction, the collapse of civilization would prevent us from leaving the planet for a long long time.

Well...

[Nrrqshrr]

"We won't survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet."
The sad part is that those who decide where our resources go can't see further than 10 years. (and being optimistic, here)

Re:If we can't manage a planets resources...

[gerf]

no, entropy is a cosmic cancer.

Re:CORRECTION

[benf_2004]

It's extremely small minded/short sighted of the worlds most famous physicist, to assume the current system will keep chugging along, with business as usual, for a THOUSAND more years. He should do a little historical research...

You're right. Given the historical precedent, I'd say mankind will probably find faster, more efficient ways to deplete the planet of its resources in well under a thousand years.

Re:If we can't manage a planets resources...

[khallow]

I think that idiots and their "proper" ways to address environmental issues are one of the problems that we can solve by moving into space. There won't be any natural biospheres in most of space to interfere with human endeavors. And we can work out the environmental issues there without input from the people who think we should do that in only a particular way.

For example, we can continue to have century after century of bad ideas on how to deal with human population on Earth - things like divine providence, eugenics, dictatorship of the proletariat, urban planned development, arcologies, etc. In space settlements, you have to get most of that right or you die.

So what is better, a comfortable place where we can continue to goof around for many lifetimes to come (that is the true "heavy lid" of which you speak), or a tough environment that forces us to be better? To actually solve the problems that you apparently care about?

A common human viewpoint:

[Hartree]

It sounds like quite a number of the people answering are quite happy to see those they like go extinct in order to revel in the anticipation of the extinction of those they don't like.

*shrug* To steal the title of Dan Ariely's book: Predictably Irrational.

It's a perverse modification of the judgement of Solomon with the mother saying "That's fine, as long as I can be sure her half of the child is truly dead."

Re:Paradox

[khallow]

Hawking ought to be more concerned about remaining confined to his chair.

Hawking ought to be long dead by now. And he currently speaks at about one word per minute (via a twitch of a muscle on his cheek). Do you really think he doesn't get that? "Concern" doesn't magically reverse a medical condition for which we have no clue how to cure.

But his concern may help save the human race. I think his priorities are in order.

Re:Paradox

[killkillkill]

The Earth is one collision or one solar event away from complete sterilization. When you start considering the scales involved in spreading life over our cold, (At least mostly) lifeless, unforgiving galaxy, the chances of the rare balance currently existing here begin to diminish even without anthropocentric global warming and the like. Maybe ecosystems like earth are abundant in our reachabable speck in the universe, but I doubt it. Humans spreading across the stars is our only know chance of intelligent life sustaining an existence. What's the point of the universe if there is nothing to appreciate it?

Re:Paradox

[tqk]

The Earth is one collision or one solar event away from complete sterilization.

Agreed.

... even without anthropocentric global warming and the like.

ITYM "anthropogenic."

Humans spreading across the stars is our only know chance of intelligent life sustaining an existence.

Once done (my opinion's mostly based on SF reading I've done), what's the point? All those far-flung human colonies are going to immediately differentiate from each other, leading to "us vs. them" on a galactic scale, so what really is the point of this exercise? Preservation of homo sapiens' DNA regardless? What for?

What's the point of the universe if there is nothing to appreciate it?

Now, that's anthropocentric. The Universe managed quite well for aeons before we dropped in and it'll continue to do so long after we're extinct. We're not the raison d'etre (despite many of us being convinced we are).