Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Stephen Hawking: Either Star Trek or we are doomed

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Here, famous physicist Stephen Hawking writes,

It’s time to abandon Earth, warned the world’s most famous theoretical physicist.

In an interview with website Big Think , Stephen Hawking warned that the long-term future of the planet is in outer space.

“It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn’t have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet,” he said.

“I see great dangers for the human race,” Hawking said. “There have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question of touch and go. (Fox News, 2010/08/09)

Well, here’s what I see. I see that Stephen Hawking needs a cup of tea, a warm blanket, and a nap.

How am I supposed to mediate between, say, Eric Pianka (too many people are dooming us) and Hawking’s view that we won’t survive unless we move to another planet?

From anything I know, we’d be best to forget the lot of them.

The fact that insane regimes have nuclear arms is certainly a problem, but it is a solvable one.

We used to solve it in the past by not letting them have them.

PS: Hawking actually appeared on Star Trek. Maybe that is why I thought of it.

Comments
Robert Byers, "what has he patented"? That is a funny way to look at achievements. The world would be better off without patents in general. They often have the effect of stifling innovation. Stephen Hawking is a world-renowned theoretical physicist who is mainly known for his work on black holes (and his discovery that radiation does occur from behind the event horizon). His disease has got nothing to do with anything.zeroseven
August 17, 2010
August
08
Aug
17
17
2010
03:38 PM
3
03
38
PM
PDT
I wish and pray that Mr Hawkings prevails over his disease and he has been a hero in not letting it stop him or despair him and an public example to everyone on human spirit. Science should be healing these stupid diseases. Any smart people around? Yet I don't understand why he is so prominent in science. what has he patented? What scientific achievement has he done that wood get him in a encyclopedia of the future? Hope he does something but it would be better to read the words of those who achieved. The big ones ofyten have insisted on a God as a creator of the universe. I don't think Mr Hawkings does.Robert Byers
August 16, 2010
August
08
Aug
16
16
2010
09:20 PM
9
09
20
PM
PDT
Unless the science of physics is totally whacked, it really seems improbable that we can ever have an interstellar civilization. And, in this solar system, the idea that extra-terrestrial colonies could thrive wholly cut off from the planet earth is probably moonshine.Ilion
August 14, 2010
August
08
Aug
14
14
2010
01:32 PM
1
01
32
PM
PDT
PaulBurnett at 2: Anyone who thinks that would work well is not a gardener. And certainly not an oceanographer. The last oceano I talked to pointed out that 97 percent of the ocean has never even been explored. Half the time, we don't know what works or why. We only see whether (and weather). Look, I am all for going somewhere else for adventure's sake. But I fear - in general - we must just solve our problems here, because we will not likely solve them somewhere else.O'Leary
August 14, 2010
August
08
Aug
14
14
2010
01:11 PM
1
01
11
PM
PDT
Our planet is already in space - I doubt Hawking meant moving the entire planet (a la Larry Niven's Puppeteers). Hawking obviously means moving a viable sample of our species (likely with commensal species for food) out of the earth's only biosphere into another alternate biosphere. This would entail possibly remaining in space, as in Gerry O'Neill's book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, or establishing habitats on / in / under the moon, Mars, the asteroids or other "local" sites - or going "Star Trek," into interstellar space and on to other star systems and their planets.PaulBurnett
August 14, 2010
August
08
Aug
14
14
2010
09:01 AM
9
09
01
AM
PDT
"The fact that insane regimes have nuclear arms is certainly a problem, but it is a solvable one. We used to solve it in the past by not letting them have them." Sorry, but that's plain wrong and really bordering on being propaganda. We TALKED with Russia as we still do to this day, as well as China. If you're afraid of one nation with a few nukes, while thinking it's ok for Russia and China to have tens of thousands, then you've been watching too much mainstream media.Gods iPod
August 14, 2010
August
08
Aug
14
14
2010
09:01 AM
9
09
01
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply