Science
Related: About this forumHawking: Mankind has 1,000 years to escape Earth
Renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking warns human beings wont survive without escaping from the fragile planet. His gloomy forecast is people will become extinct on Earth within current the millennium.
Speaking at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles the 71-year-old scientist called for further exploration of space to guarantee the future of mankind, the Belfast Telegraph reports.
"We must continue to go into space for humanity. If you understand how the universe operates, you control it in a way," Professor Hawking said, adding that "we won't survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet."
Space exploration has however been struggling with the global financial crisis and has too proven subject to spending cuts. In particular NASA's planetary science budget, which is seen as crucial to finding habitable planets, was slashed by $300 million this year.
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http://rt.com/news/earth-hawking-mankind-escape-702/
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)...and REALLY big ships to hold a billion or so people?
No?
Then we're not going anywhere.
Sure, we might manage to get a few people to Alpha Centauri ... maybe.
But the rest of us here are still doomed.
And even the pioneers are doomed -- no one lives forever. No one lives 150 years.
So we really just can't stand the thought of a universe that isn't plagued with COPIES of us.
That's it.
Who cares?
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)I think that a FTL drive might well be possible in the next couple hundred years.
We've only been flying for a hundred years.
Think of where we were 1000 years ago in technology.
Our technology is progressing very quickly and I can't imagine where we will be even 50 years from now.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)http://techland.time.com/2012/09/19/nasa-actually-working-on-faster-than-light-warp-drive/
The Alcubierre Warp-Drive is too complicated for today's engineering capabilities of mankind and has too destructive side-effects, but hey, we're just at the beginning.
When Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn discovered the mechanism behind radioactivity, who would have thought of nuclear power plants and using radioactive heating for generating thermoelectric power?
The recent version of the Alcubierre Warp-Drive was discovered by playing around with mathematics, testing how a warp-field behaves under different circumstances. Maybe we'll find a better configuration for a warp-engine that's easier to build, easier to control and needs less energy.
We need more time for trial-and-error to play around with the math behind it. The problem: The Alcubierre Warp-Drive is based on Einstein's theory of general relativity (warping of space and time) and only few people can do these calculations and simulations.
Taking into account the speed at which science works, my estimates for a Alcubierre-like FTL-drive (if the kinks can be overcome with proper engineering) is 200 to 300 years.
Johonny
(20,674 posts)thanks but no thanks Stephen.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)Warpy
(110,900 posts)It's weird how that happens to old folks, but I've seen it so many times I've come to expect it.
While I think it might be nice to go traveling within the next million years, I don't feel his sense of urgency over the next thousand.
Or we might just be the rough draft for intelligent life on the planet and the next one will be less belligerent, probably a good thing for any life form going between planets or even stars.
sofa king
(10,857 posts)If human culture and genetics are worth preserving in this incredibly violent and unforgiving universe, we have to diversify where and how we live within the solar system--forget other stars for the next 1000 years because there are so many living spaces within the solar system that have yet to be reached.
True, almost none of them have a high enough gravity to preserve an external atmosphere (edit: and magnetic field) that diverts radiation. But who says you need that?
There are an unknown but enormous number of asteroids, Greeks and Trojans, Centaurs, KBOs, Oort Cloud objects, and moons which provide more internal living area than many earths would. Ten meters of ice or dirt is all humans need to be completely protected from space's radiation and largely collision-proof.
The L2 orbits of some of the planets provide semi-stable and permanently-shaded positions which, if inhabited, would ensure that some humans would survive a truly massive solar disturbance.
The smaller ones can probably be partially hollowed out and spun to provide artificial gravity inside. No gravity is probably a bad thing, but light gravity might provide health benefits, as might controllable and semi-sterile environments. Solar power is abundant and useful all the way out to Saturn and beyond.
Some of those rocks out there are rich in volatiles, others in carbon and other critical minerals like olivine and silicon, still others in metals, which suggests that trade would be both necessary and abundant. The basic raw materials are now known to be there, though support for the colonists will have to be regular and expensive, as colonization always is.
True, travel time would be measured in years with our current crop of Hall thrusters and ion rockets. But it's already reached the point where the first to do it will have a potentially permanent advantage over others, an advantage of eery proportions.... The President and NASA sees it.
Furthermore, once humans leave Earth for the smaller rocks, it's highly unlikely they'll bother to come back. Earth's gravity makes it far too expensive and unhealthy to leave and visit regularly; once you're out there you'll have the choice of visiting earth or a dozen other unexplored places that provide the same resources for far less cost in energy and reaction mass.
It's been do-able for forty years; its on the verge of being profitable, too. So unless we knock ourselves off in the next half century or so it's going to happen, and everything will change again when it does.
SoLeftIAmRight
(4,883 posts)It is so refreshing to see intelligent replies.
We need to settle in, on and around every possible body in space. SOON.
DhhD
(4,695 posts)Newt seems to be set on the Moon neighborhood.
They, the 1%, know they are destroying this planet. Some being born this decade will expect to live 1000 years of age. The science and genetics is in development now to provide long life to the 1%. I am a miner and a consume,r on this planet, of theirs.
cpwm17
(3,829 posts)It's science fiction. We have evolved for billions of years on this planet and our only future is here. We would likely face instant death anywhere that is ever possible to reach without extreme costs and measures.
The amount of resources needed to send one human into space in any attempt at colonization could save the life of numerous people here on Earth.
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)We have more potential to understand our universe to advance exploration, perhaps as has already been done to populate the earth we inhabited.
Why is this not a realm worth thinking of?
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)The bottom line is, it's GOING to happen.