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Hawking: Humans must colonize other planets..
ege02
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This is sort of a continuation of his previous claim.
Coming from one of the most renowned scientist of our times, this sort of claim carries a lot of weight (although perhaps still not as much as it should).
It's true that it sounds like a doomsday theory, but, considering how close we have come to nuclear war already (twice, iirc), I think what he says has a lot of credibility. Besides, there is always the chance of a pandemic wiping out the human race (considering we're complex organisms and cannot adapt as well as bacteria and cannot survive like cockroaches).
So, some things to think about:
- What are the practical benefits, aside from scientific ones, of a moon base and a Mars colony?
- If not the claims of one of world's smartest scientists, what will finally convince humankind that it needs to "get off this rock"?
- Should we currently focus our efforts or at least increase our funding in R&D for space travel?
Ideas? Have at it!
CNN wrote:LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Humans must colonize planets in other solar systems traveling there using "Star Trek"-style propulsion or face extinction, renowned British cosmologist Stephen Hawking said on Thursday.
Referring to complex theories and the speed of light, Hawking, the wheel-chair bound Cambridge University physicist, told BBC radio that theoretical advances could revolutionize the velocity of space travel and make such colonies possible.
"Sooner or later disasters such as an asteroid collision or a nuclear war could wipe us all out," said Professor Hawking, who was crippled by a muscle disease at the age of 21 and who speaks through a computerized voice synthesizer.
"But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe," said Hawking, who was due to receive the world's oldest award for scientific achievement, the Copley medal, from Britain's Royal Society on Thursday.
Previous winners include Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin.
In order to survive, humanity would have to venture off to other hospitable planets orbiting another star, but conventional chemical fuel rockets that took man to the moon on the Apollo mission would take 50,000 years to travel there, he said.
Hawking, a 64-year-old father of three who rarely gives interviews and who wrote the best-selling "A Brief History of Time", suggested propulsion like that used by the fictional starship Enterprise "to boldly go where no man has gone before" could help solve the problem.
"Science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination," said.
"Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light."
However, by using "matter/antimatter annihilation", velocities just below the speed of light could be reached, making it possible to reach the next star in about six years.
"It wouldn't seem so long for those on board," he said.
The scientist revealed he also wanted to try out space travel himself, albeit by more conventional means.
"I am not afraid of death but I'm in no hurry to die. My next goal is to go into space," said Hawking.
And referring to the British entrepreneur and Virgin tycoon who has set up a travel agency to take private individuals on space flights from 2008, Hawking said: "Maybe Richard Branson will help me."
Coming from one of the most renowned scientist of our times, this sort of claim carries a lot of weight (although perhaps still not as much as it should).
It's true that it sounds like a doomsday theory, but, considering how close we have come to nuclear war already (twice, iirc), I think what he says has a lot of credibility. Besides, there is always the chance of a pandemic wiping out the human race (considering we're complex organisms and cannot adapt as well as bacteria and cannot survive like cockroaches).
So, some things to think about:
- What are the practical benefits, aside from scientific ones, of a moon base and a Mars colony?
- If not the claims of one of world's smartest scientists, what will finally convince humankind that it needs to "get off this rock"?
- Should we currently focus our efforts or at least increase our funding in R&D for space travel?
Ideas? Have at it!
ege02 on
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The answer isn't likely to be colonies within this solar system, we just need an efficent way to scout for earth-like planets. The problem being we've no real idea how common they are.
Well, dark matter has been observed.
I don't know enough about advanced physics to know whether that's the same as anti-matter though.
I wasn't aware that Dark Matter had been observed, do you have a source?
Okay then. We've got antimatter. All well and good. Now the question is, can you make enough of it to power a spaceship for six years running? (And also, wouldn't any footage shot only be able to travel back at normal speed, making it a long wait to find out whether anything came of the entire endeavor?)
http://home.slac.stanford.edu/pressreleases/2006/20060821.htm
Gravitational effects have been observed that may be explained by dark matter theory. I had thanksgiving with a couple of astrophysics students last week, and they didn't seem too enthusiastic that dark matter will actually hold up compared to reformulating other theories.
It's considered as a direct evidence for the existence of dark matter.
I'm going to take the word of real scientists over students, thanks.
I hear that once we get to mars, we are going to start attemting to get into teleportation.
Um... I think hawking has a point. Humanity is doomed. That doom will come a lot later, if we are also on other planets. Our only chance at humanity existing for ever is time travel, and we didn't do that becuase the universe isn't crowded.
It is a totally valid point, but it shouldn't really make people worry too much. Things die.
I've managed to avoid most astro units in my degree but I'm willing to say that if SLAC are hailing it as evidence of Dark Matter then I'll accept it.
-The whole problem we ran into after putting the first man on the moon is that there's no immediate practical benefit with today's technology to having colonies other than avoiding being wiped out by an asteroid. Even then I would rather have the money here to help the survivors rather than spent setting up shop somewhere else. There's also no good reason to have a colony on mars rather than an asteroid - still plenty of radiation, useless atmosphere, probably not healthy gravity. But still enough gravity to make it much harder to go back and forth.
-I don't think people will want to get off this rock until technology advances, the economics change, and we are aware of actual potentially habitable planets around other stars - which could happen as soon as 5 or 10 years from now. (Darwin project, I think?) The tech priority has to be to develop cheap ways to escape earth's gravity well. Right now it's something like $10000/lb to orbit, $100000 if done by NASA. That's too expensive for anything other than millionaire tourism to be profitable and would make interstellar ships ludicrously expensive to construct in orbit. Perhaps a space elevator will be the ticket? I know there are a couple of other ideas as well.
-I'm not in favor of increasing our space funding. NASA has been a giant money sink for the last few decades. I'm encouraged by what's going on in private industry.
Their bosses also disagree. And don't even get astrophysicists started on dark energy...
Yeah, but that was just a movie...how likely is it that black holes link to a dimension of pure evil?
Right around the point where it is really foolish to keep the entirety of a species in one location, especially given said species proclivities towards weapon stockpiling and anti-social tendencies.
Or, put another way, the odds of humanity doing something staggeringly stupid that leads to every living human on Earth dying are high enough it's a good idea to get some self supporting, independent populations somewhere else. It's a good idea for any intelligent species in the long term, but an especially good one given what we know about our own nature.
Yeah! Fuck the earth!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc3R4eG5N1k&mode=related&search=
Meh. If we ever reach the point where we can fit planet terraforming equipment on space shuttles capable of near-light speeds, then it's pretty much a given that most of the arms race problems would have cleared themselves up already, or else the people on earth would have destroyed themselves long before that.
I think between the informed opinion of one of the greatest thinkers of our generation, and some guy who says "meh, it'll work itself out" I'll go ahead and side with the genius
Besides which, the point he's trying to make is that the technology to start self-supporting colonies isn't far beyond our current level at all, and the chances of a planet wide disaster, man-made or otherwise, isn't something to be discounted.
I disagree, considering that humans have been shitting on the planet and one another for thousands of years with no end in sight, yet we've managed to progress from horse and buggy to private spaceflight in about a century.
That said, I think we'll likely develop a form of suspended animation long before we develop relativistic space travel, but maybe that's just my medgeek chauvinism talking.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Again, if we have the technology to produce anti-matter drives capable of near-light speeds, then meteors aren't going to be a big deal. Particularily since the equipment necessary to detect viable planets would have to progress by leaps and bounds by then, which means that the technology capable of detecting asteroids centuries prior to an actuaal collision would be greatly improved as well.
It's not a science question, it's a human nature problem. It's always easier to destroy than to create. If nuclear war is such a problem, and if this plan requires that our technology accelerate by leaps and bound, then why wouldn't we have simply destroyed ourselves long before we ever even made it off the planet?
If it's not that far off, then why not use it here?
Here's one example: Viable atmosphere. There is no known geological process that will create a breathable atmosphere on it's own. In order to do that, you need some sort of life. Even then, it took billions of years here on Earth. If the alternative planets have had life for the pastt several bilion years, then how will we adapt to a completely alien environment? If they don't have breathable atmosphere, then how would we be able to create it? Suppose you said, "Oh, we're create superpowerful photosynthetic bacteria that's designed to limit mutation, so it doesn't turn against us." Fine. But why not us that same technology here on Earth?
The Earth is a whole warehouse full of goodies. But you'd have to crack 'er open to harvest it.
But then everyone really would be riding along on Spaceship Earth.
Because even barring nuclear war, meteors, etc. etc., we're eventually going to run out of real estate down here.
I always kinda thought event horizon ripped off doom
The point being that it is a human nature problem. Since as time goes on, it is increasingly likely that humanity will do something irreversible here, it makes a lot of sense to focus efforts on making sure that if things go wrong here it isn't the end of humanity. The "we'll either learn to get along better or kill ourselves before it matters" argument is just a way of saying you'd rather not deal with the problem, not a solution or a reason to refuse to look for a solution.
Because it's not an either/or type of situation. We don't have to either focus all of our efforts and resources on improving conditions here or one colonizing elsewhere, they can both be done simultaneously.
It's entirely possible to have a self-sustaining colony without completely terraforming another world. There is no practical or theoretical reason an enclosed environment (Biosphere on a grander scale) couldn't support a large population of people indefinitely, during which time both the original and colony population can work to solve any problems, with the threat of immediate extinction removed.
Plenty of space to spread out, and I hear demon makes good eatin'.
Provided man establishes himself off of Earth, we'll never have to worry about wiping the species out of existence.
And in the face of a world shattering cataclysm, (meteor strike, techtonic shifting, etc) mankind and it's history would survive.
Y'all should check out this book if you have not already done so.
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/sf/books/f/forward.htm#7778
edit: one apostrophy
I think the problem right now is that it can only be made at great expense and one atom at a time, Forward proposed a giant accelerator on the moon (lots of room) to step up production