Abandon Earth Or Die, Warns Hawking 973
siliconbits writes "According to famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, it's time to free ourselves from Mother Earth. 'I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space,' Hawking tells Big Think. '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.'"
Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
Human mentality...
Need For Tools (Score:2, Insightful)
A bit early for leaving (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares? (Score:1, Insightful)
Where to, how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, I'm quite happy to go find a new home amongst the stars, but at this point the only way that is going to happen is if the earth explodes and my ashes get distributed through space.
If our future is on worlds beyond earth, then we need to start with a space transportation, of the form of a single stage vehicle that can at least go to the moon and back repeatedly, with a turn around time of less than two days. Additionally the vehicle needs to be able to return from the moon without having to depend on an already established infrastructure.
I am a big fan of travelling to Mars and beyond, but the truth is we should establish a solid space flight foundation first. At the moment the technology we have is expensive and suitable in most cases only for one-way flights and of a crew of no more than seven people. Once we resolve the transportation issue, then we the Moon and Mars suddenly become relatively easy. One way flights are great for automated payloads, but for anything intended to transport humans, then we still have a ways to go.
I really believe that we need an x-prize designed for a single stage reusable space vehicle. The aim: launch into orbit with a single stage, do a full orbit, return to earth and do the same thing a second time within two days. The x-prize would be split into two parts: unmanned for the first offering and manned for the second offering.
Re:Well...uh thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point is that since, in addition to all those people, someone like Hawking is saying it as well just adds credence to the idea. No one is claiming that Hawking invented the idea; they're just pointing out that Hawking is one of the many who follow this particular line of thinking.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:5, Insightful)
Earth's "best if lived on by" date is far enough away that I'm not terribly worried about it, but even aside from that, there are always asteroids out there that could blindside us. And I'm sure that's the sort of thing Hawking is referring to anyways.
Re:I submit this possibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I remember seeing that on Battlestar Galactica just recently. Though the whole ending with Katie Sackhoff being an angel (falling into a sinkhole on an alien world?) and God using MAGIC to create a Viper spacefighter did suck.
Why sometimes astrophysicists are dumb (Score:2, Insightful)
"The nearest star [to Earth] is Proxima Centauri which is 4.2 light years away," says University of Michigan astrophysicist Katherine Freese, "That means that, if you were traveling at the speed of light the whole time, it would take 4.2 years to get there."
Wrong. It would take no time at all.
Dr Freese - you have failed your special relativity course.
Just need a way to ascend to a higher plane (Score:3, Insightful)
Just need a way to ascend to a higher plane
I'm not a super-genius (Score:3, Insightful)
-Oz
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:5, Insightful)
Well and good, but where do we get the energy to boost enough humans and tools into space to create a viable life-supporting ecosystem elsewhere? Hawking is a physicist, so I'm a bit surprised to hear him proposing something like this without explaining where the lift capacity is going to come from. There's a reason why Pan Am never began the orbital shuttle service depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey (aside, of course, from the fact that they went out of business).
Re:A bit early for leaving (Score:2, Insightful)
Then we'd never leave!
Re:I submit this possibility (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always been an intriguing thought, but the fact is, the evidence that homo sapiens evolved from native primate species here on Earth is quite clear, and grows clearer with each passing year.
Assumptions (Score:3, Insightful)
It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million.
Right, because space and non-earthlike planets are so much less prone to disaster.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:4, Insightful)
The space race was sped up by the arms race between the USA and the USSR. Both just wanted to prove they were better.
War may be a costly way to advance technology and not a nice one, but it is an very effective one.
I would also prefer global peace as I do not think it's worth the suffering, but it would most probably hamper advancement, not speed it up.
Re:Why sometimes astrophysicists are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it depends on what frame of reference you're measuring from.
straight priorities (Score:2, Insightful)
Granted, I think that most humans will always have a competitive side. But it's a little ridiculous for the US to spend almost 37 times as much on the military budget [via the DOD] as they do on space exploration/research. And those numbers do not include anything like the FBI, homeland security, veterans affairs, DOE, and interest/fees from previous wars. If you include those numbers, the military spending is more like 60 times as much as the NASA budget. That's pretty ridiculous, in my opinion.
Re:Not even practical (Score:3, Insightful)
Even after Earth has be engulfed by the sun?
Re:Who cares? (Score:1, Insightful)
Agreed. Why should I care about what happens to the human race in 1000s of years?
Humanity is a cesspool of happily ignorant people and corrupt, greedy scum. I certainly don't want to waste any of my resources to ensure their survival way beyond my life-span.
We have more important problems right now; which we are utterly unable to manage by the way. The whole "space exploration for the good of humanity" is a quaint notion of well-off people.
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:4, Insightful)
Human mentality, indeed. This is why modern democracy doesn't work well. It's infinitely preferably to many of the alternatives, but it is still the belief that selfish, short-sighted and just plain stupid people are fit to rule a country.
Since power corrupts so completely, it's likely impossible to change this -- either you end up with idiot dictators, or idiot voters. Who both will ensure that safeguards against that situation becomes impossible to implement, for their own selfish reasons.
What's possible, though, is to exert influence and make plans that bet on not getting government support.
While establishing an Asimovian Foundation is utopian, it's not infeasible that private interests may be able to get off the ground, despite selfish and spiteful attempts at sabotage from the couch potatoes and ruling politicos (but I repeat myself), and with enough attempts, even survive.
But leave important decisions to voters, and you ensure that nothing ever gets done.
Re:This guy needs to be quiet (Score:5, Insightful)
He clearly needs to get over himself! You can totally hear the smugness in that voice synthesiser of his!
Re:Need For Tools (Score:3, Insightful)
As with most things, it is pure cost that prevents in-system colonization not technological failings. The main cost is simply the size and fuel for the launch vehicle especially as it must be quite heavy to include enough radiation shielding.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless a event occurs that is so impacting and unprecedented in known human history. Humans will never learn to unite and live in cooperation with each other. Like you said, it's not in our nature.
And with 'impacting and unprecedented' I'm thinking in terms of Divine intervention, alien visits (which might turn out to be the same thing), natural disaster killing 70/80+ percent of the human population, the made up Mayan prophecy turning out to be true after all..
That sort of stuff.
In other words, ain't gonna happen.
If we can hold out long enough hopefully technology will be so advanced and relatively cheap that at least the more fortunate in our society can get a second chance somewhere else.. (where they can start all over again)
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would I want to have my tax dollars on this.
Better spending tax dollars on saving the human race than blowing it up in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A bit early for leaving (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a mentality that will lead to problems. Issues, particularly issues that cannot be solved (like the whole of mankind's problems here on Earth) cannot be worked on in a serial fashion. You wind up deadlocked if you need to solve one problem before working on the next. It's like thinking that I need $300 per month to spend on food, so I better save up enough money for 75 years worth of food before I even think about paying any rent. Short-signtedness taken to it's extreme.
The reality is we need to be researching this stuff now. When we can colonize another rock in space, we need to do so. Waiting for all of our problems to be solved before going into space will ensure that either some natural disaster or one of those many problems you're hoping to solve will wipe us out rather soon.
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because your great-great-great-great-google-grandpa was really into NASCAR and porn and couldn't spare the dough to fund our species-saving research.
Oh - I see. I'm glad he had his priorities straight. The entire sum of human existence shouldn't be forgotten for nothing, you know?
OK, Steve (Score:3, Insightful)
right on! (Score:1, Insightful)
The temperature range, atmospheric pressure, protective magnetic field of earth are far superior to anything anywhere else in the solar system, except for a certain altitude in Venus' atmosphere, but Venus has virtually no hydrogen. Outer space requires too much work to be survivable. There are no fossil fuels in outer space. We can't even live without fossil fuels here on Earth. Space colonization is madness at this point.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite obviously, during any war worthy of the name, much of the population busies itself with the neccessary-but-useless tasks of filling catridges and emptying them. Substantial amounts of human and physical capital are reduced to rubble. Oil wells get set on fire, roads, rails and bridges get bombed, fields and forests get mined, etc, etc.
Wars represent a vast quantity of resources simply thrown away(in many cases this is the rational act on both parties' part, given the costs of being conquered; but from the overall welfare numbers, war is expensive), compared to peacetime. If, in fact, more R&D gets done during wartime, despite the reduced resources available, this suggests that peacetime could dedicate the same R&D resources, with less sacrifice(because a smaller slice of the bigger pie would be needed) or even more R&D resources for the same level of sacrifice(because getting X% of the larger pie is better than getting X% of the smaller one).
Re:Abandon Earth, die anyway (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A bit early for leaving (Score:5, Insightful)
Why and who gets to leave? (Score:3, Insightful)
Stephen Hawking is taking the survival of the species slant to preserve human space exploration. Let's look at it another way. Who gets to go? Only the wealthy? The 'geniuses'? The 'artists'? Random sampling?
Human beings are arrogant enough to think that the universe couldn't go on without them...
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
Internet: 15 USD a month (yeah, they upped the price, used to be 10 USD a month). 100 Mbit metropolitan speed. 20 Mbit external speed. 41 WebTV channels for free. Also free phone landline (and free unlimited calls within the same network). Granted, there's no extras in it, but I don't watch TV, I don't need any of those dumb TV channels.
Furthermore, I need no extra hardware, just plug the LAN cable in to my router and that's it.
Now regarding moving to other planets, show them to me
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as "only so many jobs" goes, theres always government... [wikipedia.org]
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>This planet has an expiration date.
Yeah 5 billion years into the future. During the previous 1 billion we evolved from amino acids to cells to amphibians, lizards, and intelligent mammals. So by the time the earth expires, we'll likely have moved into Q-like beings. Even if we stayed on this planet, its eventual scalding by the nearby star wouldn't affect us.
As for asteroids that caused massive extinctions, the previous one was 70 million years ago. And 250 million years ago. During that timespan we evolved from small rodent-like lizards into modern mammals. Who knows where we'll be in another 70 million years.
Re:I submit this possibility (Score:3, Insightful)
it may be easier to primorial goo with all the building blocks
Easier it sure would be, but the point is about spreading the human race, not just life. And seeding primordial (missed a 'd' there) goo is like giving a dozen kids a random assortment of Lego blocks (plus enough time to forget about the Spongebob episode they just watched) and expecting identical results. Because of how evolution works, there's no guarantee you'd get anything like humans, and it would take far too long to see results.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, but no one wants to or likes to face reality. This type of delusion, that we *must* get off this planet, is a delusion of the mid 20th century onwards, which I like to call Space Nuttery.
The fact that space is utterly empty, devoid of anything to support life deters Space Nutters not at all. They get their engineering and biology from sci-fi.
As you point out, we do not have the energy for this. We don't have the technology or resources. Period.
The reality is simple. We are born on this planet. We will die here. This wounds Space Nutters for some reason. They're also usually the same people who are against life-extension technology, but think the vastness of space is somehow proportional to our ridiculously short life span.
If the Earth can't support life in the long term, what makes them think the dead hulks like the Moon or Mars, or the metal-melting Venus and Mercury are of any help?????
Anyways, we can't get there. And even if we did, we'd be so utterly and ridiculously dependent on Earth that it in no way answers their argument.
We can't even fix a pump in orbit with all the industrial might of the Earth just a few kilometers away.
Hell, our technology is in decline, besides making faster computers, what has progressed in the last few decades? Nothing fundamental.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:5, Insightful)
It amazes me that people can stand there and that war has some unique property that causes development.
The only reason that 'war' advances development is that we're willing to spend tax money on development during war.
We could get all the effect (In fact, more, as war sucks resources.) and none of the deaths if we'd just spend money on development.
Of course, I live in the US, where we can't even spend tax money on bridges. War is about the only thing we're willing to spend tax money on at all.
Re:Not even practical (Score:3, Insightful)
Short of a direct hit into the Sun by some other largish body (from our observations - an exceedingly rare event), which would "flame up" the Sun quite a bit and perhaps push it off the main sequence prematurely (most likely not, so it would be at most just atmosphere & part ocean stripping solar flare - which will happen anyway, to much larger degree, in 1 billion years - so would be fine underground, and certainly not much different in other places in the system), what you're saying will happen in 5 BILLION YEARS. Think good about what such timescales mean...
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:5, Insightful)
The meaning of life is to plant trees that we will not live to sit in the shade of.
Thousands of generations of people who are no longer living gave you everything you have now. Will you give something to the future, or will you just be another leech?
Re:Time schedule? (Score:3, Insightful)
I stand by the statement, your paranoia notwithstanding. I fear my great grandchildren dying not of something falling out of the sky, but by the effects of ecosystems gone bad, the dying ocean then bereft of fish to eat and poisoned by fertilizer and pesticide runoff.
They'll die because some idiot took up the battles of their ancestors, hijacked a nuke, and used it to settle some perceived debt that's hundreds of years old.
The doomsday sayers have been using the excuse to leave, find a new nirvana, only to have the new one turn into dissention, turmoil, and conflict. Outward migration fixes very little. This is a dying planet, but it could be rejuvenated. No one wants to spend the energy to do that, it seems.
Re:Time schedule? (Score:4, Insightful)
The only true problem is that humanity as a whole has yet to determine that either is as or more important than their self-centered point of view.
Re:Time schedule? (Score:2, Insightful)
He doesn't talk about "migrating off" so much as "spreading out" we would still need to solve the class of problems you discuss. but it makes sense to get *some* of the population off this rock, and as far away as possible, as soon as possible...
Re:Time schedule? (Score:3, Insightful)
Presumably your enemies.
The migrations to the US are a great case in point. Get those (fill in these blanks) away from here, they're apostates, heretics, and they dress funny and have bad breath.
It gives a whole new meaning to Gleason's "To the moon, Alice!"
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably True (Re:This is pretty much what I've) (Score:4, Insightful)
If Armstrong reported back from Applo 11 he saw precious gems the size of beach balls we'd had bases on The Moon long ago. If Viking 1 and Viking 2 turned on their cameras and saw the ground was litered gold and silver we'd have bases there too. But the truth at the moment turns out they are just barren. On Earth people avoid vast stretches of barren "bad lands" and consider them mostly worthless. Why go out to The Moon and beyond just for really expensive "bad lands"?
Re:Why sometimes astrophysicists are dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
Nowhere in that statement does she say it is. There's a second quote further on which could be taken together with this to imply, kinda, that she was making the statement from the traveler's perspective, but it's far from clear, and, I also think, "Which is more likely, the physicist doesn't know basic relativity or the reporter botched it and gave quotes out of context?" The question pretty much answers itself.
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, rule of thumb for a standard 30-yr fixed rate mortgage is that 28% of your gross pay is the maximum mortgage payment you should be making. That's a bit more than 25% of your take-home.
And what if you passionately and eloquently communicate your views, and your representative pockets another $5k donation from Comcast and ignores you? Or you passionately and eloquently communicate your views, and your representative says, "I disagree with you, and 52% of my constituents disagree with you, and I want to get re-elected... so you lose kid, sorry?" Have we lost our right to complain then, too? And why do I get the sneaking sense that to you, "disagreeing with what I think" == "doing it Glenn Beck style and looking like a tard?"
Shit. Does this mean that the world isn't as simply black and white as you'd like to imagine it?
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire sum of human existence shouldn't be forgotten for nothing, you know?
Yes. Why not? we are so unimportant anyway. Supposing that a great comet destroys the human race in the next 1000 years, humans would exist for, let's say, 100,000 years, which is 1/130,000 of the universe's age (13 billion years).
Re:Die. (Score:1, Insightful)
It is the global imperative of every single being on this planet, from ants to elephants, with the odd exception of Panda bears, to perpetuate the species.
So?
It's the underlying driving force of evolution. We are born, we grow, we procreate, we die... rinse and repeat.
Sounds like a pretty pointless exercise the way you're describing it.
What Hawking is saying is simply that if we wish to fulfill our evolutionary destiny..
Actually I think he's saying if we want to AVOID fulfilling our evolutionary destiny, which is extinction...
we will need to find another hospitable home to do it since we will eventually outgrow and probably make this one uninhabitable in the process.
As if our planet now isn't big enough. He should just be honest and say "we're fucked here. Woudln't it be cool to hedge our bets and go into outer space?" But I don't see how (a) space would be any less fuck-upabble and (b) why we in the 21st century should be worrying about the problems of the 25th century. I mean jesus, we've got enough actual problems. Let Buck Rogers handle it.
Re:Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
There are only two real problems to getting people up and out sustainably:
1) It costs a ton to get anything out of the gravity well.
2) The potential for a small group to psychosocially devolve in isolation (experiments in this field are ongoing).
The solution to the first problem is probably focusing on building a space elevator or the establishment of a base in the asteroid belt for extraction and manufacturing. If we could build structures outside of any appreciable gravity well then the cost of operations would be drastically reduced (though the initial expense would be, heh, astronomical).
The solution to the second problem is to make the group of people as large as possible and inject new people and things into it as frequently as possible to mitigate the psychosocial effects of isolation.
Re:lol (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah! Why just fuck up the earth, when we can fuck up the GALAXY!
Change yourself? Too hard! Let's just filthy another nest.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:4, Insightful)
The federal budget would like to disagree with that statement. The majority of our federal budget is tied up in providing social programs and infrastructure, not in "war". Yes, the defense department gets a comparatively large portion of the budget. NO, it does not comprise all or even the bulk, of government spending. This is a facile talking point that is, unfortunately, entirely false as well.
Of course, as all the recent administrations have shown us, not having the tax money to spend doesn't mean you can't rack up a hell of a credit card bill. Why let things like "insufficient tax revenues" ruin the party?
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
What you just said sounds really nice--only, that argument doesn't actually work in RL (real life).
GP was playing devil's advocate, but it's the reality of the situation. People can indeed be fundamentally divided using the two orthogonal dimensions: the have and have nots; and the want and want nots. And the majority of the people fall somewhere in the the have not and want quadrant.
Which means that the majority's not really thinking of their successive generations (especially those who do not have direct successors), only of themselves, what they don't have but want.
The only people who think the way you think are the ones who want not. But out of those, the only people capable of making a different are the ones who have.
A democracy gives every individual an important something, which is a voice or say. So the people under a democracy automatically have a bit more than those who don't. But since most people fall into the category of want anyway (regardless of whether they have), it doesn't really matter in the end.
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
Afghanistan was retribution for New York (which killed fewer people than die on US highways every month). We've been there for nine years now, time to get it done and over with. And Iraq was nothing but a giant clusterfuck; they were no danger to us at all and had no connection to 9-11. Saudi Arabia, otoh, is where all of the 9-11 terrorists were from.
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:1, Insightful)
If you study history, you'll find a never-ending stream of examples of stupid, short-sighted thinking causing all kinds of problems, from brief inconveniences to collapses of civilizations.
I have little doubt that future historians, looking back at our time, will see the same thing.
We like to think we're special, that we're so much smarter now than ever before. We're not. We know things our ancestors didn't, and have forgotten things our ancestors knew, but overall, we're the same idiots.
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:4, Insightful)
No good, my friend. You are thinking, which is more than most people do. But, people will STILL think in the short term. Precious few people think 4 years into the future today. Double their lifespans, you MIGHT get them to think four years ahead. MAYBE. Most likely, they won't be able to think any further into the future than "Wonder if I can get laid tonight?" It's human nature. Sucks, don't it?
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah yes, the old false dichotomy.... I love it.
Is it possible that I might not want to spend MY MONEY on either of THESE. Yes indeed, that is not only possible but it is is TRUE.
But thanks for playing....
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmmm. OK, I'm not a US citizen, but think about this:
Why should a president/congress/whatever fritter away millions or billions of dollars on a project with (at best) a small likelihood of useful returns when that money could be better spent on public health or on wars in foreign countries?
Looks like a no-brainer to me.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:3, Insightful)
Beyond that, it is incredibly stupid to try and use that particular fallacy, since (as you said) EVERYONE eventually makes a spelling or grammar mistake, and thus the complainer ends up showing themselves as a hypocrite.
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
If that is how you feel, then you are so much dead weight, dragging humanity down. Narcissism sucks.
So has the good doctor changed his mind? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wasn't it only like four months ago that Dr. Hawking was direly warning us all to stay as far out of the interstellar limelight as possible [slashdot.org]? Another flip-flop from the liberal elite intelligentsia!
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:2, Insightful)
To do what? Fuck over those nice people on Eroticon VI? Our species doesn't have a good record, and if there's any evidence at all for an Intelligent Designer(TM), it's that Theory of Special Relativity:
Thou shalt not exceed the speed of light, so thou art forced to live in the mess created by thyself. Tough love, I guess, but it makes sense.
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:3, Insightful)
It's simple, then. We'll just have to declare war on Mars.
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about we solve our problems here on Earth before attempting to export them into insanely expensive and hostile environments?
Because there will always be another problem to solve. Waiting until everything is perfect here on Earth is equivalent to saying that we're never going to try.
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score:2, Insightful)
>>>As for asteroids that caused massive extinctions, the previous one was 70 million years ago. And 250 million years ago. During that timespan we evolved from small rodent-like lizards into modern mammals. Who knows where we'll be in another 70 million years.
This is the kind of guy that should be looking for building opportunities after a "hundred year flood event". After all, he's got another hundred years without a flood. Right?
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
there's some person making a very interesting statement about human nature and its influence big ambitious projects and in response slashdot's finest starts bean counting wether a $320 comcast bill is justified.
Just don't yet know if I should find this hilarious or sad...
Re:Yeah, but where does this get ME? (Score:3, Insightful)
Try this one on, then: If we stay here with thumbs firmly planted in our asses? In 50-100 years, we'll start having to fight wars over dwindling resources - oil, food, gas, certain metals...
It would be a hell of a lot cheaper to spend the resources in getting humans (and more importantly, energy production) into space now, than it will cost to try and do the same thing while simultaneously trying to fight off, say, China.