Hawking: We Gotta Get Out of This Place
Blaring in an above-the-fold headline on the Drudge Report yesterday and making its way around the blogosphere today is world-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s statement during a press conference that humans must colonize space to survive. The AP reports:
Humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years, the British scientist told a news conference.
"We won’t find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system," added Hawking, who arrived in Hong Kong to a rock star’s welcome Monday. Tickets for his lecture planned for today were sold out.
He added that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.
"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.”
The 64-year-old scientist — author of the global bestseller A Brief History of Time — uses a wheelchair and communicates with the help of a computer because he suffers from a neurological disorder called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
Hawking said he’s teaming up with his daughter to write a children’s book about the universe, aimed at the same age group as the Harry Potter books.
