Hawking: How Humankind Will Survive the Future

(Discover)  Listen, people of Earth: Everything's going to be fine. All we have to do is survive another century or two without self-destructing as a species. Then we'll get off this rock, spread throughout space, and everything will be all right.

If this is not your idea of "optimism," then you are not Stephen Hawking. The esteemed physicist garnered headlines, and some eye-rolls, after telling Big Think last week that humanity needs to leave the Earth in the future or face extinction.

As The Atlantic noted: He's not knocking climate scientists' attempts to figure things out on Earth-he's just thinking long term. "There have been a number of times in the past when our survival has been touch-and-go," explains Hawking at Big Think, mentioning the Cuban Missile Crisis, and "the frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future…. Our population and our use of the finite resources of the planet earth are growing exponentially along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill," while "our genetic code still caries our selfish and aggressive instincts"

Combined with Hawking's statement earlier this year that it might be dangerous to contact aliens because they could come and wipe us out, the physicist's latest warning makes it feel like he's increasingly a member of the gloom-and-doom crowd. But not so. He's just the kind of person who thinks on the long, long term.

Let's jump back to another publicly engaged scientist: Carl Sagan's message in Cosmos that the stars await… if we don't destroy ourselves.



Sagan was pushing urgency and vigilance, not gloominess. The same, I think, is true of Hawking-it's why he calls himself an "optimist" despite his dire warnings of treacherous times ahead. Indeed, he says, if humanity can just get past the next 200 years without driving itself to extinction, then we're good to go. Once we spread to different locations in space, no event contained to a single world-even a catastrophic one like all-out nuclear war or a massive asteroid strike-could do in the species by itself.

Hawking concludes the Big Think message about the necessity of a human future in space by saying, "That is why I'm in favor of manned, or should I say 'personed', space flight." That is: Putting people back on the moon or take them to Mars wouldn't be just a vainglorious gesture. The next phase of humanity demands it.

He's far from the only one thinking far into the future. Take DISCOVER blogger Phil Plait, who, in his book Death from the Skies!, discusses audacious plans for our descendants to take way, way down the line to survive the slow dying and then death of the sun. (For a culture so plugged into now, it seems laughable to consider something billions of years down the line. But where Hawking may be proven wrong in his 100-200 years statement, he is clearly correct about the options for humanity's long-term future: We'll either leave the Earth or die before we get the chance.)

Or, if you want to go all the way to the far end of the optimism spectrum, take another future-obsessed theoretical physicist: Michio Kaku, whom I interviewed about his TV show Sci-Fi Science for the September issue of DISCOVER, on newsstands now. The outline of a Type I, or global, civilization is now emerging on the Earth, he says, with the Internet and even type I sports-like the FIFA World Cup. And whether or not you agree humans are doomed if they don't leave the Earth for points beyond, he believes our future is out there.

"It's not guaranteed we'll [even] hit Type I," he says. "But I'm optimistic."

This article was written by Discover'sAndrew Moseman.

---

[jjg777]

I would like to propose an alternate proposal to that of steven Hawkings.

God made man and the universe. There are not any sentient forms of life in the universe except on earth. It is Gods intent that MAN will fill the entire universe with our kind. We will someday (probably after the return of the Lord Jesus) go into space and travel to distant planets and we will colonize these planets and man will become the seed for filling the entire universe which will take and eternity.

This means that we will learn to travel at some significant percentage of the speed of light. Probably, animals and man will continue to reach further and further into the cosmos.

This is the model that God used to fill the earth and it will be the model he will use to fill the UNIVERSE. GLORY TO GOD!!!

[revmrbill]

"Take DISCOVER blogger Phil Plait, who, in his book Death from the Skies!, discusses audacious plans for our descendants to take way, way down the line to survive the slow dying and then death of the sun."

In recent months the sun has been waking up from a longer than usual sun spot cycle. Moreover, I have seen various articles of late in which scientists state that something is going on deep within the sun?s core. They confess that they do not know what and admit that they are baffled. Obviously they do not know everything there is to know about the multi-billions of stars throughout the universe, and in particular one star, the sun. In the last couple of years or so there has been more said and written about the Mayan calendar that many claim indicates that the world will come to an end on December 21, 2012. Scientists have not been mute on this subject as well proclaiming that really nothing out of the ordinary will occur on that day. Of the doomsday cult a vast number are proclaiming that the event which will lead to our demise is the sun throwing a large mass our way thus destroying a large part of the planet and killing a large part of its population. At first I dismissed all this as just a bunch of hoopla but I am beginning to wonder. Dr. Hawking is one of the brilliant scientists the world has ever known. He is not endorsing the 2012 catastrophe, but merely admitting that vast destruction awaits us some time in the future makes me even more curious. What is going on within the sun is indeed a mystery. Perhaps it is gearing up to blast a part of itself toward the earth. It does seem to be within the realm of possibility. I?m not going to sell off all my possessions and sit back and wait for the end, but I do wonder. If something of that nature should occur we wouldn?t be around to witness the death of the sun. Actually we probably won?t be around. We will have already annihilated ourselves or as Dr. Hawking suggests left the planet into the ?final frontier.?

[ToolMangler1]

"In the last couple of years or so there has been more said and written about the Mayan calendar that many claim indicates that the world will come to an end on December 21, 2012. Scientists have not been mute on this subject as well proclaiming that really nothing out of the ordinary will occur on that day."



When 2012 rolls around and the world doesn't end, Doomsday prophecies will become objects of ridicule and derision. While I am a Christian, I have not tried or claimed to read his mind. I do not believe that GOD is in 'ANY' hurry to end this experiment called 'Mankind'. For the fundamentalists reading this, "Why would an 'Eternal being' (GOD) build an entire universe only to destroy it 6000 or so (of our years) later????"
I couldn't have much faithin one that did that... The 'long view' makes much more sense to me. Be assured, He does exist, that is the 'only' thing that 'does' make sense..