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Human Race 'Must Colonise Space Or Face Extinction', Warns Stephen Hawking
The Daily Mail
Sun Aug 8, 2010
Category: Science News
Area: Cambridgeshire
Stephen Hawking has warned that unless the human race colonises space within the next two centuries it will disappear forever.
The famous astrophysicist says that our only chance for long-term survival is to move away from Earth and begin to inhabit new planets.
In an interview with website Big Think, Hawking said he was an 'optimist' but the next few hundred years had to be negotiated carefully if the human race is to survive.
He said: 'I see great danger for the human race. There have been a number of times in the past when survival has been a question of touch and go. The Cuban missile crisis in 1963 is one of these.
'The frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future. We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully.'
'But I am an optimist. If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries our species should be safe as we spread into space.'
Earlier this year, Hawking warned that humans should be wary about trying to make contact with other alien lifeforms in space as we could not be sure that they would be friendly.
'If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy we should make sure we survive and continue.'
But he warned that mankind was entering 'an increasingly dangerous period of our history'.
'Our population and use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially along with our technical ability to change the environment for good and ill,' he said.
'But our genetic code carries selfish and aggressive instincts that were a survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next 100 years let alone the next thousand or a million.
'Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain on planet Earth but to spread into space.
'We have made remarkable progress in the last 100 years but if we want to continue beyond the next 100 years our future is in space.'
That was why he is in favour of manned space flight, he said.
Earlier this year, Hawking he said that a spaceship capable of travelling through time - but only forwards - would breach Albert Einstein's theories of relativity.
This means that humans might one day be able to use time travel to skip generations into the future.
Having taken six years to reach its full speed of 98 per cent of the speed of light (650million miles per hour), a day on board the ship would be equivalent to a year on Earth, he said, allowing those on board to reach the edge of the galaxy in just 80 years.
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