Thread: Stephen Hawking: We Must Leave Earth

Stephen Hawking Says Earth Is Under Threat and Humans Need to Leave

Stephen Hawking has warned that Earth is under threat and repeated his belief that humans must leave in the next few centuries if we are to survive as a species.

“The Earth is under threat from so many areas that it is difficult for me to be positive. The threats are too big and too numerous,” he said, according to the Evening Express. “Our physical resources are being drained, at an alarming rate. We have given our planet the disastrous gift of climate change. Rising temperatures, reduction of the polar ice caps, deforestation, and decimation of animal species. We can be an ignorant, unthinking lot.”

Hawking made the comments as part of his keynote address at the Starmus Festival in Norway. The festival celebrates science and music, and aims to help the public get a better understanding of complex science.

The professor has made similar dire warnings about the fate of mankind in the past, but in his latest comments, he addressed several specific issues he feels are the biggest threat and talked about how we might become a multi-planetary species.

Hawking said that in the past, when humans have faced “similar crises” in terms of resources, they moved to new parts of the world: “Columbus did it in 1492 when he discovered the New World,” he said. “But now there is no new world. No Utopia around the corner."


“We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth,” he said.

The Milky Way is home to an estimated 100 billion planets. Of these, millions, if not billions, are “potentially habitable,” meaning they could have the conditions right to host life, including a stable climate that allows liquid water to exist.

Hawking noted there are an estimated 1,000 stars within 30 light years of Earth, so if just 1 percent of these were Earth-like, we would have 10 candidate planets to move to. He also said he believes humans will have developed the technology for interstellar travel within the next 200 to 500 years.

“Human colonization on other planets is no longer science fiction. It can be science fact,” he said. “The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years. Civilization began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before.”

********

After several "bongs" during the " interview," it was decided that Captain James Tiberius "Jim" Kirk would be leading the expedition...

William Shatner was born in Montreal, Quebec (1931), the first city I visited on the move to Canada...

Great to have a fellow Canuck at the helm, though he lives in California...

Originally Posted by BaitongBoy

Hawking noted there are an estimated 1,000 stars within 30 light years of Earth, so if just 1 percent of these were Earth-like, we would have 10 candidate planets to move to. He also said he believes humans will have developed the technology for interstellar travel within the next 200 to 500 years.

Sounds good.

I'll wait around for that.

But it is an interesting topic, BB.

Yeah.
Leave the planet and find another habitable planet to fvck up completely.

Originally Posted by thaimeme

Yeah.
Leave the planet and find another habitable planet to fvck up completely.

Right on! Shouldn't we get our own house in order before vandalizing anywhere else?

Originally Posted by BaitongBoy

Stephen Hawking: We Must Leave Earth

Have no idea why Boringboy would post this. He left the planet a long time ago.

When he says "we" must leave the planet, he means just a select few. Unless we completely change our attitudes in terms of respecting each other, other life forms and our environment, then it might be best if our ignorant, parasite race becomes extinct, rather than pollute the unviverse any further.

The meek shall inherit the Earth.

Originally Posted by pickel

The meek shall inherit the Earth.

Only if that is ok with everyone else!

I agree,

I've just left Earth on the rocket ship Ya-Ba.

Will come back on the HMAS Samsong not for long though .

Off you go then Stevie mate , tek fucking Borris with you ... And if there's any seats up the back Mrs. May an'all...

SH is a very intelligent person. His comments are futuristic and should not, but will be, taken on board by all the doom and gloom climate nutters.

Massive euthanasia might be helpful.

Nothing extraordinary about our kind.

Originally Posted by VocalNeal

SH is a very intelligent person. His comments are futuristic and should not, but will be, taken on board by all the doom and gloom climate nutters.

Professor Hawkins displays the same tired and fabricated established Eurocentric convention.
Nothing terribly revealing nor extraordinary about him either, really.


Repeated over and again until all is real and true.
An easy catch to manipulated already dumbed-down populations.

Bit dumb for a so called genius to overlook that trivial fact that even if we manage to escape Earth we would still be stuck with ourselves.

This pointless exercise should appeal to liberals and other nutjobs; if we really cared about our planet more than we do about our own, we would commit global suicide, naturally in an environmentally friendly way, and hope the next dominant species do a better job of it.

Have I got my physics right?
'Only'30 light years away.
That means if we can develop a transport system that can travel at the speed of light ( didn't Einstein say that was impossible??)
It will take us 30 years to get there.
I think there is more chance of the human race living in Cities underground or under the sea to be honest.

Originally Posted by BaitongBoy

Stephen Hawking Says Earth Is Under Threat and Humans Need to Leave

So the OP gets to stay then? Another win for you.

How far are we away from immortality ? Or at least a much longer life? This combined with automation will create real issues for mankind in the coming years. Capitalism and "democracy" as it is today has no hope, we are going to have to find a way to reduce population growth, ensure a much more even playing field for all (or only the rich will get to live 200+ years), maybe people will go further into a cyber world, looking at the youth of today glued to their smart phones many are half way into a fantasy life already.

Ok, so the solution is a type of Mattrix arrangement.

Stevie can still fcuk off into space...

Heh...It's like spreading chum in the waters...I could unzip my fly and there would be Icedick and Chastity swimming the celestial seas with their mouths open...

Spewing their nonsense eternally...

555...No wonder the Earth is doomed....

Originally Posted by BaitongBoy

I could unzip my fly and there would be Icedick and Chastity

...do tell...

Originally Posted by tj916

Have I got my physics right? 'Only'30 light years away. That means if we can develop a transport system that can travel at the speed of light ( didn't Einstein say that was impossible??) It will take us 30 years to get there. I think there is more chance of the human race living in Cities underground or under the sea to be honest.

The problem, is it takes an immense amount of energy to propel an object anywhere near the speed of light... we would need more fuel (mass = energy) than all the mass in the universe using conventional propellants...

There are a few alternative options: light sails, nuclear power (controlled fusion explosions)

Rocket Scientists Say We'll Never Reach the Stars

The Daedalus star ship, proposed in the 1970s, would propel itself forward using controlled fusion explosions and would take 50 years to reach Barnard's Star, nearly 6 light years away.
Image by Nick Stevens, Home Page for Nick Stevens AKA Starbase1 Many believe that humanity's destiny lies with the stars. Sadly for us, rocket propulsion experts now say we may never even get out of the Solar System.
At a recent conference, rocket scientists from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and academia doused humanity's interstellar dreams in cold reality. The scientists, presenting at the Joint Propulsion Conference in Hartford, Connecticut, analyzed many of the designs for advanced propulsion that others have proposed for interstellar travel. The calculations show that, even using the most theoretical of technologies, reaching the nearest star in a human lifetime is nearly impossible.
"In those cases, you are talking about a scale of engineering that you can't even imagine," Paulo Lozano, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a conference attendee, said in a recent interview.
The major problem is that propulsion – shooting mass backwards to go forwards – requires large amounts of both time and fuel. For instance, using the best rocket engines Earth currently has to offer, it would take 50,000 years to travel the 4.3 light years to Alpha Centauri, our solar system's nearest neighbor. Even the most theoretically efficient type of propulsion, an imaginary engine powered by antimatter, would still require decades to reach Alpha Centauri, according to Robert Frisbee, group leader in the Advanced Propulsion Technology Group within NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
And then there's the issue of fuel. It would take at least the current energy output of the entire world to send a probe to the nearest star, according to Brice N. Cassenti, an associate professor with the Department of Engineering and Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. That's a generous figure: More likely, Cassenti says, it would be as much as 100 times that.
"We just can't extract the resources from the Earth," Cassenti said during his presentation. "They just don't exist. We would need to mine the outer planets."
A 160-Million-Ton Needle
Interstellar propulsion systems are not a new idea. Rocket scientists, aeronautical engineers and science-fiction enthusiasts have proposed such designs for several decades.
In 1958, U.S. scientists explored the possibility of a spaceship propelled by dropping nuclear bombs out the back, a so-called nuclear-pulsed rocket. The research, called Project Orion, was killed by the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the budgetary requirements of the Apollo Project.
In 1978, the British Interplanetary Society designed a mission to Barnard's Star, almost 6 light years away, using a pulsed fusion rocket fueled by deuterium. Building such a spaceship would require mining the outer planets for fuel for at least two decades, scientists said at the Joint Propulsion Conference this year.
But the thought experiments continue. At the conference, Frisbee presented a theoretical design for a ship using antimatter to propel its way to nearby stars.
Frisbee's design calls for a long, needle-like spaceship with each component stacked in line to keep radiation from the engines from harming sensitive equipment or people.
At the rocket end, a large superconducting magnet would direct the stream of particles created by annihilating hydrogen and antihydrogen. A regular nozzle could not be used, even if made of exotic materials, because it could not withstand exposure to the high-energy particles, Frisbee said. A heavy shield would protect the rest of the ship from the radiation produced by the reaction.
A large radiator would be placed next in line to dissipate all the heat produced by the engine, followed by the storage compartments for the hydrogen and antihydrogen. Because antihydrogen would be annihilated if it touched the walls of any vessel, Frisbee's design stores the two components as ice at one degree above absolute zero.
The systems needed to run the spacecraft come after the propellant tanks, followed by the payload. In its entirety, the spaceship would resemble a large needle massing 80 million metric tons with another 40 million metric tons each of hydrogen and antihydrogen. In contrast, the Space Shuttle weighs in at a mere 2,000 metric tons.
"Interstellar missions are big," Frisbee said, in part because of the massive amounts of energy (and hence fuel) required to get moving fast enough to make the trip in anything like a reasonable amount of time. "Any time you try to get something up to the speed of light, Newton is still God."
With that fuel, it would still take nearly 40 years to travel the 4.3 light years to Earth's nearest neighbor, Alpha Centuri, he said.
Down and Out On Earth
Even improving humans' access to near space is not easy.
Scientists have all but discarded ideas for rockets that can reach orbit using a single stage. Instead, private space ventures have focused on lightening the payload and rocket and on increasing reliability. If space tourism comes into vogue, then launch providers could benefit from economies of scale.
But alternative-propulsion systems? They are not in short supply in people's imaginations, but most fail the test of reality, Marcus Young, a researcher at the U.S. Air Force Research Lab's Advanced Project Group, told conference attendees. Young and his team surveyed ideas for launch vehicles that could be accomplished in the next 15 to 50 years and found most to be unworkable.
Space elevator? Even if the engineering made sense, the design requires a breakthrough in materials science to create cables long and strong enough. Rail guns? A vehicle would have to shoot down a 100-kilometer track at 50 times the force of gravity to achieve orbit. Nuclear power? Radioactivity would limit its use to outside Earth's atmosphere, and the politics are positively toxic.
"There are a lot of ideas that initially you say, 'Hey, that might work,'" Young said. "But after a little research, you quickly find that it won't."
Yet, just because science fiction is not yet a reality is not a reason to make science suffer, said MIT's Lozano.
"There is a lot of interesting stuff that you cannot do even in the solar system," he said. "We have the technical means to do it. But some of the most sophisticated technologies ... we have not developed. Not because we can't, but because we have not made it a priority."
As for interstellar travel, even the realists are far from giving up. All it takes is one breakthrough to make the calculations work, Frisbee said.
"It's always science fiction until someone goes out and does it," he said.

Originally Posted by tomcat

do tell...

... behave you slut ...

...unzipping now...I've heard the rumors...

Originally Posted by tomcat

Originally Posted by BaitongBoy

I could unzip my fly and there would be Icedick and Chastity

...do tell...

Hafta ask them...Perhaps they're gay...Nothing wrong with it, mind...

But they're so fooking angry all the time...Heh...

Originally Posted by BaitongBoy

But they're so fooking angry all the time

I know an excellent calming procedure...hopefully administered before we leave earth...