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Stephen Hawking: We Might Have 1,000 Years Left on Earth (usatoday.com)
Stephen Hawking says the only way humankind can escape mass extinction is to find another planet. And the clock is ticking. From a report on USA Today:During a speech at Britain's Oxford University Union, Hawking detailed the history of man's understanding of the universe and reiterated that the future of humankind lies in space. "We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity," he said. "I don't think we will survive another 1000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet."
Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man and solid scientist. His abilities as a futurist leave something to be desired.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
... says the man who has outlived his own predicted life expectancy by more than 3x.
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Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
This critical issue deserves a more subtle discussion that guesses about when humans will go extinct on earth. Without human foolishness (nuclear weapons, pollution, etc) we would expect we have millions of years. But humans are foolish, so we really don't know. I am suspicious of claims that the human future is in space. Both because there is no plausible way for sustainable human settlements off planet to be manufactured with current technology and because it enables a short sighted approach that treats this planet as a disposable stepping stone to better things. More likely, intelligent machines we make will colonize space before we do since it is much easier to design them to tolerate the harsh environment than it is to modify biology to survive off planet. Maybe we will teach them to build habitats for us, but in that case, it will really be the machines that are doing the colonizing. And this is much further off than many people suspect.
The technology we would need to survive on any other planet besides Earth would also make surviving any catastrophe that could b fall Earth -- including catastrophic climate change, nuclear winter, or a giant meteor -- trivially easy in comparison.
The worst thing that could conceivably happen to Earth, at least until the sun becomes a red giant billions of years in the future, is something like the above catastrophes would render it a barren wasteland utterly inhospitable to life. But every other planet is already a barren wasteland utterly inhospitable to life. If we could survive at all on any other planet, we could also survive anything that happens to Earth.
Call me when self-sustaining cities on the seafloor, Antarctica, or in the middle of the Sahara are normal things, and then we can talk about living on another planet just because it's there.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
The more sustainable we become as an economy, the longer we can stay. The less sustainable we are the less likely are we able to leave. Presently, we are not able to leave. To be able to leave, we need a machine which is sustainable in all aspects. In case it is not, we run out of material we can transform and entropy will destroy the machine and subsequently all inhabitants of it (yes a space ship/ark is a machine). However, in case we achieve the goal to be sustainable in the context of such space ship, we are also able to apply that on Earth.
Fun fact, we have 34 years to get CO2 neutral (this is being sustainable with the atmosphere) or else we are fucked up. Unfortunately, the US will not go in this direction for the next 4 years. So dear US citizens, 30 years left and the clock is ticking.
Beside the CO2 problem, we have also sustainability problems in electronics, food, water, cement, fishing/oceans, ecosystem-diversity etc. All of them have a point of no return and many of them are linked to others. Therefore, we should get on with it. Now is the time. Not tomorrow. NOW.
I don't think anyone [even Stephen Hawking] can say anything meaningful about where we'll be 1000 years from now. Did anyone in the year 1016 A.D. foresee conditions today?
Trying to get Humans to curb their hardwired instinctual drive to reproduce is almost completely futile for various reasons ranging from religions frowning upon any sort of birth control methods, to people too poor to afford birth control, to people who just won't stop having kids -- and since geriatric medicine is getting better, people are living longer.
I'd agree except this has been fixed in the developed world with universal negative population growth among populations around longer than second generation immigrant. You keep talking about how people can't stop having kids... but they have.
Population growth already slowing down. Many countries are already in demographic decline. It's not hard to imagine that the rest of the planet will follow and growth will stop by the end of the 21st Century or so.
But -100 for taking a bit too long a view.
Technically there's no reason we can't actually populate other planets or solar systems in 1000 years if we decide to. On the other hand there's no reason we can't sustain human culture on this planet for another billion years if we decide to.
So sure, by all means lets investigate technologies to more efficiently explore our surroundings but let's spend a bit more effort on sustainability in the balance. For starters we could stop spending the vast majority of our energy arguing over issues that don't matter one bit (where to go to the bathroom, sexual preference of the person 4 doors down).
If we can't figure out how to solve sustainability problems moving to another planet is just a change of scenery.
The crazy Americans are a minority
Citation needed.
earth shattering kaboom.
you should have gone with earth shattering kaboom.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.