Renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking revealed this week when he believes the human race will become extinct – and unfortunately for those of us despondent about the current political climate, it isn’t anytime soon.
Giving a speech on Tuesday at the Oxford University Union in the U.K., Hawking shared that he believes humanity has just about another 1,000 years on this planet before we either fall prey to mass extinction, or rocket ourselves to an entirely new planet that we can destroy.
The leading theoretical physicist said that his rounded estimate of 1,000 years is due to several factors, and that those who are terrified of the thought of such a relatively short time should focus on expanding man’s reach into space in order to avoid the expiration date.
“We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity,” he said. “I don’t think we will survive another 1000 without escaping beyond our fragile planet.”
Hawking seems fairly confident that man will accomplish sustainable colonies on other planets and rocks in space, but says that it will be at least another 100 years before that is feasible. In that time, Hawking says, we have to be very careful while we are trapped on the only home we’ve ever known.
“[We] have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race,” he said. “However, 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.”
Though this may be news to us regular folks, the scientific community has been looking into mans’ mass exodus from planet earth for quite some time. In just the last few years, NASA scientists have located more than 1,000 earth-like planets across the galaxy. Any one of these could possibly sustain human life – though who knows what other life we might have to contend with?
The planet has had it with our destructive meddling, and in the next 1,000 years it will be telling us – you ain’t gotta go home, but you’ve gotta get the hell outta here!
