{"id":19494,"date":"2016-01-19T21:50:15","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T13:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/stephen-hawking-mad-scientists-could-kill-us-all-thats-why-we-need-space-colonies\/"},"modified":"2016-01-19T21:50:15","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T13:50:15","slug":"stephen-hawking-mad-scientists-could-kill-us-all-thats-why-we-need-space-colonies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/stephen-hawking-mad-scientists-could-kill-us-all-thats-why-we-need-space-colonies\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Hawking: Mad scientists could kill us all \u2013 that\u2019s why we need space colonies"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_223948\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-223948\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-223948\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/160119-hawking-630x379.jpg\" alt=\"Stephen Hawking\" width=\"630\" height=\"379\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/160119-hawking-630x379.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/160119-hawking-768x462.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/160119-hawking.jpg 974w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-223948\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">British physicist Stephen Hawking worries about humanity\u2019s long-term future. (Credit: NASA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>British physicist Stephen Hawking says we need to colonize other worlds because humanity will almost certainly face a disaster on Earth sometime in the next few millennia&nbsp;\u2013 perhaps a disaster of our own making.<\/p>\n<p>Among the risks he outlined in a report from the&nbsp;BBC are nuclear war, climate change and genetically engineered viruses. What\u2019s more, he said&nbsp;further progress in science and technology will bring \u201cnew ways things can go wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Like SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Hawking believes the best cosmic insurance policy is to create human colonies on other worlds in our solar system and beyond. Here\u2019s the way he put it in the BBC report:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cAlthough the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever, we will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Hawking\u2019s comments aren\u2019t that surprising: He issues frequent warnings about risks ranging from the the rise of artificial intelligence and the persistence of aggressive behavior&nbsp;to a Higgs boson doomsday. He also has said&nbsp;we shouldn\u2019t broadcast our location too loudly for fear of attracting hostile extraterrestrials.<\/p>\n<p>The idea that further scientific progress will bring new threats is just an extra dollop of gloom on top.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Professor Stephen Hawking on Space Exploration\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3frrRHEOEVU?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>The outlook isn\u2019t completely dark, however. \u201cWe are not going to stop making progress, or reverse it, so we have to recognize the dangers and control them,\u201d Hawking said. \u201cI\u2019m an optimist, and I believe we can.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hawking made the remarks in response to audience questions while delivering&nbsp;this year\u2019s BBC Reith Lectures&nbsp;on the topic of black holes.<\/p>\n<p>The Reith Lectures are traditionally recorded for later broadcast. This year\u2019s first installment is due to air on Jan. 26 on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service.&nbsp;BBC News says it\u2019ll publish the full text of the lectures online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British physicist Stephen Hawking worries about humanity\u2019s long-term future. (Credit: NASA) British physicist Stephen Hawking says we need to colonize other worlds because humanity will almost certainly face a disaster on Earth sometime in the next few millennia&nbsp;\u2013 perhaps a disaster of our own making. Among the risks he outlined in a report from the&nbsp;BBC [&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":[5587,21,3755],"class_list":["post-19494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-futurist","tag-space","tag-stephen-hawking"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19494"}],"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=19494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}