In a speech given at Oxford's University Union, the world-renowned intellectual, Stephen Hawking gave humanity a deadline: 1,000 years. In the next millennia, we need to find another planet to colonize and call home.
The Cambridge professor warned that even if we survive the next 100 years given all the natural threats of climate change, external threats such as asteroids, the man-made dangers of nuclear terrorism and the full development of artificial intelligence, remaining on Earth puts all of humankind at risk of a pending mass-extinction.
The whole thing may seem like your typical Hollywood science-fiction but Prof. Hawking told the Daily Express that the Earth has now become very fragile and if our specie is to survive, we need to keep looking at outer space and eventually have the future generations escape.
Mankind's relentless and unsustainable use of natural resources only hastens the planet's pending cataclysmic end, the Express reports.
While other scientist agree with the adverse changes we are facing now, not all of them share the same opinion of finding and colonizing another planet necessary.
The cosmologist and theoretical physicist also talked about the "M Theory" which Hawking believes is the theory of everything. The theory basically combines the existing 5 String theories and a 6th theory called 11-dimensional supergravity. Einstein was looking for a more unified theory than relativity and some scientists believe that the answer is M Theory.
Stephen Hawking also remains skeptical of developing full-blown artificial intelligence (AI) that could pose a threat to human race when AI redesign itself and supersede man who will not be able to compete because of his biological limitations.
In the last 50 years, we have dramatically advanced our knowledge of outer space. What used to be limited to government research is now being explored actively by entrepreneurs. The likes of Elon Musk, Russian physicist Yuri Milner and Sir Richard Branson have made it part of their business empire to develop and transport people into space commercially some day.
NASA have also been searching for an Earth-like planet since 2009 and have found thousands of candidate planets since then. It is extraordinary since the discovery of the first exoplanet that revolves around a star, pretty much like our own sun was made only 21 years ago.
