Okay ... I've got a lot of respect for Stephen Hawking ... he's accomplished a great deal to help us better understand the universe in which we live - but I gotta draw the line in the sand when he says we have to abandon the earth. Umm, Stephen - one question: Where we gonna go, brah ... ? and how we gonna get there ... ?

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http://www.myfoxnepa.com/dpps/news/stephen-hawking-abandon-the-earth-dpgoha-20100809-fc_9088678

Stephen Hawking: Abandon the Earth

Updated: Monday, 09 Aug 2010, 10:02 AM EDT

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has some advice for the people of Earth - it's time to get off.

"I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space," Hawking said to Big Think , a global forum that includes interviews with experts.

"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."

The physicist called humankind's survival "a question of touch and go" and referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963 as one time people narrowly avoided extinction. He also referred to the 22,600 stockpiled nuclear weapons, including 7,770 still operational, scattered around the planet.

If that doesn't drive us off, University of Sussex astrophysicist Dr. Robert Smith said global warming may reach a point "where all of Earth's water will simply evaporate." (Oh really? Wonder if he got that from AlGore? We'd REALLY be screwed then ... ) He said life will disappear on Earth long before the 7.6 billion years some say the aging sun will expand and destroy Earth.

Well what I think Hawking was saying is that we need to get off our collective a$$ and get our noses back into the science of space exploration. However, I don't share his dire prediction that we only have a few hundred years left. To his credit, Hawking is trying to figure out how to make a "Star Trek Warp Drive." This would actually be essential to any space colonizing as there is no where in our solar system except Earth were we could live. At least I'm pretty sure we'd all freeze to death on Europa.

The bottom line is, human life only has so long left on this planet. I mean in 100 million years our sun will cook itself out, and then we'll really be hosed. We are hit by asteroids daily, and while most burn up in the atmosphere, sooner or later, we'll get nailed by another one that's about six or seven miles in diameter. That would be sufficient to wipe out all organic life on the surface of the earth and half of the life in the oceans. I mean the odds of one of those things hitting is better than the odds of winning the power-ball jackpot, and people win that all the time.

However, we will probably become extinct long before we start getting along well enough to seriously consider a grand scale project like interstellar colonization. The closest star is four light years away, and the closest one with what scientists believe is an inhabitable planet is over 24 light years away. We aren't covering that distance. I mean we can't even keep airplanes in the sky.

We're not gonna make it to what Michio Kaku refers to as a 'Type 1' civilization ... we'll die a 'Type 0' ...

In order to reach interstellar space, we'd need to devote all of our global material and intellectual resources into pulling off "warp" or some other means of travel.

We'll also need advances in every other science like medicine, agriculture, etc .. . to support a colony elsewhere.

So, I'm guessing it's more likely for benevolent aliens to arrive and solve all our problems manually than it is for humans to develop the tech on our own.

Giving the man credit for thinking outside of the box.

I think he may be wwwwaaaaayyyyy ahead of his time on this concept.

We cannot live off this planet and will not be able to for quite a while yet.

It is something for our children's children to work towards.

Never shoulda let him watch Wall-E over and over again...

he's right, we can't stay here forever... but the water hasn't boiled off in 4.5 billion years, i don't think it will be soon. mother nature will always win. the planet has been wiped of life 5-6 times that we know of so far, and it will do it again.

Somehow I get the feelin' that, when we get to the point where ALL the water on the planet is gonna boil away, we'll have been gettin' notices that somethin's gonna happen WAY before that begins ... 'course, we'll have ignored 'em the way we usually do, but hey ... I'd kinda opt for 'Losing Our Atmosphere' as a much bigger hint that our lease is up ...

He must be snorting some extreme meth!!