Stephen Hawkings Warning Abandon Earth Or Face Extinction
http://bigthink.com/ideas/21570
Andrew Dermont on August 6, 2010, 12:00 AM
Let's face it: The planet is heating up, Earth's population is expanding at an exponential rate, and the the natural resources vital to our survival are running out faster than we can replace them with sustainable alternatives. Even if the human race manages not to push itself to the brink of nuclear extinction, it is still a foregone conclusion that our aging sun will expand and swallow the Earth in roughly 7.6 billion years.
So, according to famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, it's time to free ourselves from Mother Earth. "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space," Hawking tells Big Think. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load."
Hawking says he is an optimist, but his outlook for the future of man's existence is fairly bleak. In the recent past, humankind's survival has been nothing short of "a question of touch and go" he says, citing the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963 as just one example of how man has narrowly escaped extinction. According to the Federation of American Scientists there are still about 22,600 stockpiled nuclear weapons scattered around the planet, 7,770 of which are still operational. In light of the inability of nuclear states to commit to a global nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the threat of a nuclear holocaust has not subsided.
In fact, "the frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future," says Hawking, "We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully."
Even if humans manage to avoid a nuclear stand-off over the next thousand years, our fate on this planet is still pretty much certain. University of Sussex astrophysicist Dr. Robert Smith says eventually the aging Sun will accelerate global warming to a point where all of Earth's water will simply evaporate.
"Life on Earth will have disappeared long before 7.6 billion years," says Smith, "Scientists have shown that the Sun's slow expansion will cause the temperature at the surface of the Earth to rise. Oceans will evaporate, and the atmosphere will become laden with water vapor, which (like carbon dioxide) is a very effective greenhouse gas. Eventually, the oceans will boil dry and the water vapor will escape into space. In a billion years from now the Earth will be a very hot, dry and uninhabitable ball."
Finally, between the next thousand years or so that Hawking says it will take man to make the planet uninhabitable and the billion years it will take for the sun to turn our planet into an arid wasteland, there is always the chance that a nearby supernova, an asteroid, or a quick and painless black hole could do us in.
Takeaway
One way or another, the life on Earth will likely become uninhabitable for mankind in the future. We need to start seriously thinking about how we will free ourselves from the constraints of this dying planet.
Why We Should Reject This Idea
Despite what Hawking describes as humankind's "selfish and aggressive instinct," there may be some biological impediments to finding another planet to inhabit.
"The nearest star [to Earth] is Proxima Centauri which is 4.2 light years away," says University of Michigan astrophysicist Katherine Freese, "That means that, if you were traveling at the speed of light the whole time, it would take 4.2 years to get there."
Unfortunately, at the moment we can only travel at about ten thousandth of light speed, which means if man were to use chemical fuel rockets similar to the those used during the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey would take about 50,000 years. Without the use of a science-fiction-like warp drive or cryogenic freezing technology, no human would live long enough to survive the journey. In addition, "the radiation you would encounter alone would kill you, even if you could get a rocket to go anywhere near that fast," says Freese.
On the upside, if man ever develops the technology to travel at the speed of light while remaining shielded from cosmic radiation, he could effectively travel into the future. "A five year trip at light speed could push an astronaut forward by 1000 earth years," says Freese, "If he wanted to see if any humans were still around by then."
Andrew Dermont on August 6, 2010, 12:00 AM
Let's face it: The planet is heating up, Earth's population is expanding at an exponential rate, and the the natural resources vital to our survival are running out faster than we can replace them with sustainable alternatives. Even if the human race manages not to push itself to the brink of nuclear extinction, it is still a foregone conclusion that our aging sun will expand and swallow the Earth in roughly 7.6 billion years.
So, according to famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, it's time to free ourselves from Mother Earth. "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space," Hawking tells Big Think. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load."
Hawking says he is an optimist, but his outlook for the future of man's existence is fairly bleak. In the recent past, humankind's survival has been nothing short of "a question of touch and go" he says, citing the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963 as just one example of how man has narrowly escaped extinction. According to the Federation of American Scientists there are still about 22,600 stockpiled nuclear weapons scattered around the planet, 7,770 of which are still operational. In light of the inability of nuclear states to commit to a global nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the threat of a nuclear holocaust has not subsided.
In fact, "the frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future," says Hawking, "We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully."
Even if humans manage to avoid a nuclear stand-off over the next thousand years, our fate on this planet is still pretty much certain. University of Sussex astrophysicist Dr. Robert Smith says eventually the aging Sun will accelerate global warming to a point where all of Earth's water will simply evaporate.
"Life on Earth will have disappeared long before 7.6 billion years," says Smith, "Scientists have shown that the Sun's slow expansion will cause the temperature at the surface of the Earth to rise. Oceans will evaporate, and the atmosphere will become laden with water vapor, which (like carbon dioxide) is a very effective greenhouse gas. Eventually, the oceans will boil dry and the water vapor will escape into space. In a billion years from now the Earth will be a very hot, dry and uninhabitable ball."
Finally, between the next thousand years or so that Hawking says it will take man to make the planet uninhabitable and the billion years it will take for the sun to turn our planet into an arid wasteland, there is always the chance that a nearby supernova, an asteroid, or a quick and painless black hole could do us in.
Takeaway
One way or another, the life on Earth will likely become uninhabitable for mankind in the future. We need to start seriously thinking about how we will free ourselves from the constraints of this dying planet.
Why We Should Reject This Idea
Despite what Hawking describes as humankind's "selfish and aggressive instinct," there may be some biological impediments to finding another planet to inhabit.
"The nearest star [to Earth] is Proxima Centauri which is 4.2 light years away," says University of Michigan astrophysicist Katherine Freese, "That means that, if you were traveling at the speed of light the whole time, it would take 4.2 years to get there."
Unfortunately, at the moment we can only travel at about ten thousandth of light speed, which means if man were to use chemical fuel rockets similar to the those used during the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey would take about 50,000 years. Without the use of a science-fiction-like warp drive or cryogenic freezing technology, no human would live long enough to survive the journey. In addition, "the radiation you would encounter alone would kill you, even if you could get a rocket to go anywhere near that fast," says Freese.
On the upside, if man ever develops the technology to travel at the speed of light while remaining shielded from cosmic radiation, he could effectively travel into the future. "A five year trip at light speed could push an astronaut forward by 1000 earth years," says Freese, "If he wanted to see if any humans were still around by then."
9 Comments
LarsaruSI actually find the notion of saving our species to be a vain and misguided effort. In 100 million billion trillion years when the Universe is still here, We wont be. If we survive long enough we will evolve from Homo Sapien to something else. Ergo the Human race as we are today, here defined as Homo Sapien as I doubt we would consider Cro Magnon or Neanderthal as Human beings if they were around today, can not survive even if we leave this planet. All paths of evolution lead to something else that is "better", it is just a matter of applying the right amount of time and biological pressures, or it dies out in the end.
Nietzche said it best: "Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species."
gwiz665I would agree with you, @LarsaruS, but I'm an optimist. I want humanity to be here for a long time (preferably with me as their robot overlord) and I think it's a bit defeatist to say it's misguided. Apathy never got us anywhere.
gorillaman>> ^LarsaruS:
I actually find the notion of saving our species to be a vain and misguided effort. In 100 million billion trillion years when the Universe is still here, We wont be. If we survive long enough we will evolve from Homo Sapien to something else. Ergo the Human race as we are today, here defined as Homo Sapien as I doubt we would consider Cro Magnon or Neanderthal as Human beings if they were around today, can not survive even if we leave this planet. All paths of evolution lead to something else that is "better", it is just a matter of applying the right amount of time and biological pressures, or it dies out in the end.
Nietzche said it best: "Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species."
Then why bother to type that post?
Our lives have meaning to us today, this is true regardless of their ultimate end. If you have any values at all, it's rational to try to advance and sustain those values; the continuation of our species is, currently, necessary to that operation.
LarsaruS@gwiz665 I am all for the Singularity as I believe that is pretty much the only way we can survive in the long run. From the moment you are born you are steadily rotting away as time passes. Being a robotic overlord would solve that issue and so would curing ageing too.
@gorillaman Each individual can find meaning in his/her/its life. That does not mean that life in general has a meaning. Life (the concept and on a grand scale) is meaningless. We are all zombies. Dead men walking.
Yea I am great at parties, if you want people to be depressed and go home. Truth sucks. Ignorance is bliss.
gorillamanTo me nihilism is like looking at a pile of bricks and despairing that it isn't a house. The assertion is correct, but the wrong action is inferred. Our existence in the present moment is absolute fact, including the qualities of that existence; we do have goals, which may be pursued without concern that they are invalidated by our nature. Intelligence is the ability to defy nature.
The universe doesn't have any inherent meaning, we give it meaning just as we effectively bring it into being through our perception.
The human race is God.
rebuilder>> ^LarsaruS:
I actually find the notion of saving our species to be a vain and misguided effort. In 100 million billion trillion years when the Universe is still here, We wont be. If we survive long enough we will evolve from Homo Sapien to something else.
Of course. So what? Humans have children, even though those children are not clones of their parents. Why should we care that somewhere far down the line our offspring will speciate into something else? They will still be Homo in some way.
LarsaruSAye, Homo is the way of the future :-D
But in all seriousness it means that we can't save our species. That's all.
AnimalsForCrackers says...>> ^LarsaruS:
Aye, Homo is the way of the future :-D
But in all seriousness it means that we can't save our species. That's all.
Well, that applies whether we leave the planet or not. Semantic quibbles are the least of our challenges in colonizing another world.
I recently read some interesting stuff (i.e. nerd porn) relating to this here on Pharyngula. Just a smattering (the comments section mainly) of the very real obstacles preventing us from achieving this dream not likely until the far distant future. Also some interesting speculation on the idea that genetically modifying ourselves to be able to thrive on otherwise inhospitable planets being the more important/crucial barrier than our rocket/space propulsion technology.
I'm typically an optimist on this subject (damn you Carl Sagan!) but also a realist.
ponceleonWait, won't the rapture happen long before any of this matters?
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