Earth could become 'ball of fire' within 600 years
Posted: Nov 11th, 2017, 10:06 am
Stephen Hawking: Earth could become 'ball of fire' within 600 years
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking predicts that the world's mounting population will consume enough energy to render the world a "ball of fire" within 600 years, according to British newspaper Metro.
Speaking via video Sunday at Beijing's Tencent WE Summit, Hawking declared that humans must "boldly go where no one has gone before" if they wish to survive another million years, The Sun reported.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nat ... 839698001/
The renowed physicist tells a Beijing gathering that overcrowding and increased energy consumption could doom Earth.
Hawking sees an answer in Breakthrough Starshot, the $100 million research and engineering program announced in 2016. Hawking and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg sit on the project's board.
"The idea behind this innovation is to have the nanocraft ride on the light beam," he said of the interstellar space travel program. "Such a system could reach Mars in less than an hour, or reach Pluto in days, pass Voyager in under a week and reach Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years."
Hawking's on a roll with the grim futuristic predictions. On Monday, in another video speech, he declared that effective artificial intelligence "could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst."
https://www.Castanet.com/news/royal-caribbe ... -shuttles/
As Charles Darwin observed, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Unfortunately, in our divided and polarized world the cooperation and shared investment in such an undertaking as saving humanity from ourselves will be difficult. This is very sad given our potential as a species to do so much better. In 600 years from now, we will either be living in a world of incredible advancement where everyone has opportunity to participate, or we will have continued on the path we are currently on and devolved back to tribes.