Physicist Stephen Hawking, who has often spoken about the end of humanity as an inevitable result of the natural course of nature as well human error, has now said that humanity would not survive if it does not, eventually, venture out into space.
The 74-year-old physicist and cosmologist, recently agreed to go onboard the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo vehicle or VSS Unity, which is business magnate Richard Branson’s latest offering to the world of science.
It is part of a futuristic project, reminiscent of the the cartoon series The Jetsons, and already over 700 people have booked passage on this sub-orbital plane, including celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber among others.
And now Hawking too has joined the space-wagon. According to the physicist, humanity is at a possible risk of destroying itself through nuclear wars, natural disasters, man-made viruses or even the mismanagement of superior AI (Artificial Intelligence), once it emerges. Hawking says the only chance humans have is space travel.
At a time when millionaires such as Branson and SpaceX’s Elon Musk are pouring in money into space travel, with Musk even proclaiming his elaborate plans for the ‘colonization’ of Mars, Hawking’s predictions could not a have come at a more fortuitous moment.
Professor Hawking, who is of the view that humanity will most likely not survive another 1000-2000 years, has advised in his earlier works to start looking for planets to colonize, though he says that science will not be ready to overtake such a mission for at least another century.
Feature Image Source: Reuters