Run to the stars!
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has warned humanity to populate outer space or risk the human race dying out.
Following his comments earlier this year in a Discovery Channel programme that humans must be careful about communicating with hostile aliens from other planets, Prof. Hawking has now warned that unless we colonise space within the next two centuries, mankind will disappear.
In an interview with academic website Big Think, Prof. Hawking 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’.
Mr Hawking also warned that Earth was running out of finite resources as populations burgeoned. He also referred to Prof. Richard Dawkins’ theory of ‘selfish genes’ and said, ‘Our genetic code carries selfish and aggressive instincts that were a survival advantage in the past. So it will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next 100 years, let alone the next 1000 or million.
‘Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain on planet Earth but to spread into space’.
