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."

Comments

futurist

[Spazmania]

Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man and solid scientist. His abilities as a futurist leave something to be desired.

Surviving on Earth is easier

[Pfhorrest]

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.

1000 years is a very long time

[Ranbot]

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?