During a speech at Oxford University Union last Tuesday, Professor Stephen Hawking said that the human race needs to look for a new home somewhere in the stars, if it wants to survive. The renowned theoretical physicist claimed that humanity now has at least one thousand years before a possible extinction event.
While Hawking said it was a “”glorious time to be alive and doing research into theoretical physics”, he said that there are many problems that we humans are facing which may lead to global catastrophe. He claims that humans will continue to take from the Earth, leaving it more abused with each passing generation.
Hawking added that finding another planet is mankind’s only chance of survival.
“We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity,” he said. “I don’t think we will survive another 1000 without escaping beyond our fragile planet.”
NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been working to discover Earth-like planets since 2009. So far they’ve discovered over 2,000 planets while 4,500 “planet candidates” are still under investigation.
In January he said, “We face a number of threats to our survival from nuclear war, catastrophic global warming, and genetically engineered viruses. The number is likely to increase in the future, with the development of new technologies, and new ways things can go wrong.”
Source: TNP, Yahoo, ExpressCoUK
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