{"id":18747,"date":"2017-11-07T17:13:45","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T09:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/stephen-hawkings-latest-doomsday-prediction-earth-could-go-to-hell-by-2600\/"},"modified":"2017-11-07T17:13:45","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T09:13:45","slug":"stephen-hawkings-latest-doomsday-prediction-earth-could-go-to-hell-by-2600","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/stephen-hawkings-latest-doomsday-prediction-earth-could-go-to-hell-by-2600\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Hawking\u2019s latest doomsday prediction: Earth could go to hell by 2600"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_276388\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-276388\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-276388\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/160920-hawking-universe-630x445.jpg\" alt=\"Stephen Hawking in &quot;Into the Universe&quot; on Discovery Channel\" width=\"630\" height=\"445\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/160920-hawking-universe-630x445.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/160920-hawking-universe-768x542.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/160920-hawking-universe.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-276388\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">British physicist Stephen Hawking delved into cosmic mysteries in a Discovery Channel series titled \u201cInto the Universe with Stephen Hawking.\u201d (Credit: Discovery Channel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>British physicist Stephen Hawking has warned repeatedly that Earth could well be doomed, but his latest warning gives us no more than 583 years before we get burned on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>During a video clip aired at the Tencent WE Summit on Sunday, the 75-year-old scientist said that humanity would have to deal with exponential growth in the centuries ahead. He noted that the world\u2019s population has been doubling every 40 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis exponential growth cannot continue into the next millennium,\u201d Hawking, who has been coping with neurodegenerative disease for decades, said in his computer-synthesized voice. \u201cBy the year 2600, the world\u2019s population would be standing shoulder to shoulder, and the electricity consumption would make the Earth glow red-hot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is untenable,\u201d Hawking said as a planet-sized ball of fire blazed on the screen.<\/p>\n<p>You can catch his talk starting at about the 3:45 mark in this video:<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"2017 \u817e\u8baf We \u5927\u4f1a\u201c\u82e5\u6709\u5149\u201d \u970d\u91d1\u8c08\u661f\u9645\u65c5\u884c\u201c\u7a81\u7834\u6444\u661f\u201d\u8ba1\u5212   Tencent We Assembly &quot;If Light&quot; S.Hawking Talks Star Trek\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FIcWzZ2e9uI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Hawking sees the physical limit to growth as a factor that will force humans to find new homes beyond Earth. During Sunday\u2019s talk, he touted the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, which plans to send beam-powered, nano-sized spacecraft on a reconnaissance mission past Alpha Centauri, the nearest star beyond our sun.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSuch a system could reach Mars in less than an hour, or reach Pluto in days, pass Voyager in under a week, and reach Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>There are a couple of caveats to Hawking\u2019s plan: Sending humans beyond the solar system, or even settling them on Mars, will require bigger and more sophisticated spaceships than Breakthrough Starship\u2019s nano-probes. And back on Earth, Hawking\u2019s 40-year doubling rule won\u2019t necessarily hold true for the next five centuries. Middle-of-the-road projections suggest that population growth will level off&nbsp;sometime after 2100, well before we\u2019re standing shoulder to shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t the first time Hawking has given us a deadline to reach for the stars. In a BBC documentary, Hawking says the human race has only 100 years to colonize another planet, and this summer he recommended beginning the job with a base on the moon by 2020. Although we\u2019re not likely to make that 2020 timetable, the Trump administration is apparently picking up on that page in Hawking\u2019s playbook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British physicist Stephen Hawking delved into cosmic mysteries in a Discovery Channel series titled \u201cInto the Universe with Stephen Hawking.\u201d (Credit: Discovery Channel) British physicist Stephen Hawking has warned repeatedly that Earth could well be doomed, but his latest warning gives us no more than 583 years before we get burned on Earth. During a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5311,4652,3755],"class_list":["post-18747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-doomsday","tag-interstellar-flight","tag-stephen-hawking"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18747"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}