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

Re:why do we care?

[Rick Schumann]

Sure. 'Lots of species' have gone extinct in the 4.5B years of Earth's lifespan so far, but we are the the dominant, and very-much sentient, self-aware, tool-making-and-using species of Earth, that distguishes ourselves by being the only one on the planet that changes our environment to suit us, rather than allowing the environment to dictate our adaptation. Other, lesser species have gone extinct for that reason; we don't have to. Of course, we might go extinct anyway -- but only if we sit on our opposable thumbs, contemplating our navels, until it's too late to do anything about it. Another unique ability that homo sapiens has? Planning for the future.

Re:futurist

[Dutch Gun]

Agreed. What I'd like to know is what makes anyone think that he's got the answers to our future when everyone else who's made such far-sighted doomsday predictions has so far demonstrated to be ridiculously wrong. Remember, by now billions were supposed to be starving to death, we'd be out of oil, the ice caps were supposed to be gone, and/or we'd have destroyed ourselves in nuclear hellfire.

I do agree that we should strive to spread out into space, so as to avoid leaving all our eggs in one basket, but unless its something completely out of our control, like a massive cosmic event, then sorry, I'm not buying the doom and gloom anymore. We've got plenty of serious problems we need to deal with without resorting to hysterics. Even if it doesn't mean the end of humanity, there are still some potentially bad scenarios we'd like to avoid. But every time scientists or environmentalists make wackadoo doomsday predictions that don't come true, it actually HURTS credibility of those that were more responsible.

Re:why do we care?

[cmdr_klarg]

Another unique ability that homo sapiens has? Planning for the future.

Next quarter's profits? Sure. Next year and beyond? Not so much.

Re:futurist

[DarkOx]

Population collapse will occur due to disease, lack of food, or lack of fresh water (possibly due to sea incursions). In any case the survivors will be able to extract a lot of useful materials and tools scavenging the ruins of society. So I think a small group of humans probably can survive most predicted and predictable calamities.

Re: Surviving on Earth is easier

[epine]

look back that amount and things are unrecognizable

That's a rather trite definition of "unrecognizable". Let's take a look at a serviceable "one thousand year's ago" cultural landmark.

Magna Carta

First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons.

Neither side stood behind their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War.

After John's death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause. At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name Magna Carta, to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest which was issued at the same time. Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant of new taxes; his son, Edward I, repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of England's statute law.

Now I don't know about others, but I'm having trouble finding anything in there that doesn't strike me as entirely modern—except for Edward I following in the footsteps of his father Henry (for a while we had largely fixed that problem, but then we brought the eternal water-powered millstone of aristocracy back to America by terminating estate tax; the new Edward is a trust-fund baby, stemming from a long line of trust fund babies—stretching as far back as the eye can see—but this has yet to come to fruition as we're presently but a half a generation into the inevitable upshot, so I'm not redefining "modern" just yet).

But obviously I cherry picked that example (plus I cheated by 200 years), so let's spin again.

History of gunpowder

The invention of gunpowder is usually attributed to experimentation in Chinese alchemy by Taoists in the pursuit of immortality, and is popularly listed as one of the "Four Great Inventions" of China. It was invented during the late Tang dynasty (9th century) but the earliest record of a written formula appeared in the Song dynasty (11th century).

That pretty much allows one to build a modern rifle, supposing you have steel.

Steel

The Chinese of the Warring States period (403–221 BC) had quench-hardened steel, while Chinese of the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD) created steel by melting together wrought iron with cast iron, gaining an ultimate product of a carbon-intermediate steel by the 1st century AD.

Surely I'm still cheating, let's try again.

Hero of Alexandria

Heron of Alexandria (c. 10 AD–c. 70 AD) was a Greek mathematician and engineer who was active in his native city of Alexandria, Roman Egypt. He is considered the greatest experimenter of antiquity and his work is representative of the Hellenistic scientific tradition.

Heron published a well recognized description of a steam-powered device called an aeolipile (sometimes called a "Heron engine"). Among his most famous inventions was a windwheel, constituting the earliest instance of wind harnessing on land. He is said to have been a follower of the atomists. Some of his ideas were derived from the works of Ctesibius.

Much of Heron's original writi

Re:futurist

[Sperbels]

Your faith that ingenuity will solve all problems before they happen is a little ridiculous. And frankly, a panicking electorate is probably the best way to mobilize government to hedge our bets against a potential disaster. If the government doesn't do something, who do you think will? You think the market will miraculously self correct? BS. The market brings us unstable bubbles with violent and sudden collapses. The government mitigates or prevents these disasters.