Stephen Hawking Receives Copley Medal 118
smooth wombat writes "Stephen Hawking, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded the Royal Society's 275th Copley medal for his contribution to cosmology and theoretical physics. Other notables to receive the award, established by Stephen Gray in 1731 'For his new Electrical Experiments', include Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur and Albert Einstein. In his remarks, Professor Hawking reiterated his previous comments that man must colonize other planets. The medal presented to Professor Hawking was sent into space onboard Space Shuttle Discovery and spent some time on the International Space Station in July of this year. Hawking has expressed an interest in going into space and commented, 'My next goal is to go into space, maybe Richard Branson will help me.'"
I'm embarassed to ask, but-- (Score:3, Insightful)
Colonisation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Space Colonies: A Waste of Resources? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Space Colonies: A Waste of Resources? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's say we clean this planet to the standards you refer to, then everyone is happy until a large meteor hits the planet and either wipes out mankind or our civilization (along with its technical ability to go into space).
He is thinking much deeper then a knee jerk liberal reaction to global warming and polution.
DK
Re:Space Colonies: A Waste of Resources? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fact is, food is cheap, but getting it to the parts of Africa that need it isn't. Why? The transport system sucks. Why does the transport system suck? Because the African governments are corrupt or the area is filled with warlords who *want* people to starve in genocidal proportions.
You can throw money all day long at a place like Africa today, and all you will end up with is people like Idi Amin or Mobutu Sese Seko, who get just incredibly rich off of aid money and bribes that should be used to develop infrastructure. The people will continue to starve or die of AIDS. Looking at Uganda under Yoweri Museveni (who is now looking a little of the dictator himself), you saw a very real campaign against AIDS that *worked* not because we dumped a billion dollars on Uganda, but because the government and people worked on the problem.
Space, while not perhaps as pressing a goal, is still somewhere we really do need to go, and it is a place where there is a lot of room to throw money around and you will still get a result. What Africa needs is a new mindset, and peace, and simply pushing money at it doesn't help peace. Not with the corruption that thrives off of it.
Re:Space Colonies: A Waste of Resources? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now say the Earth is at half maximum capacity in the future. If those people have children the way their parents did, then in fifty years the population will double and the Earth will be full. In another fifty years, they will need a second Earth to house all the people. In another fifty years, four Earths. I think that's what he is really trying to get across.
That is to say eventually we will either face famine, war, etc as the Earth simply becomes too populated and is drained of its resources, or we must escape to the cosmos. And honestly, this is probably the most far out reason of why we should go to other planets. There are a lot cooler reasons like simple exploration and things like that.
Re:Space Colonies: A Waste of Resources? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's all about offsite backups, man.
-- Dave
Re:Space Colonies: A Waste of Good Planets? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Space Colonies: A Waste of Resources? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, then I hope we invent teleportation, too. Even with multiple space elevators and an unlimited space ship carrying capacity you'd be hard-pressed to move a substantial portion of the current population of the planet off of it.
I think what he's saying is more that if we colonize other planets, it's harder for our race to disappear. Just colonizing other planets in the solar system means that an extinction level event is no longer just one rock.
Re:I'm embarassed to ask, but-- (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm embarassed to ask, but-- (Score:3, Insightful)
Human nature isn't subject to fundamental change; merely the restraints upon it that have changed from time to time. Barring some sort of trans-human ascendancy (and I always thought the whole "singularity" idea was too far fetched), we'll always be that way.
That being said, you're falling into the trap of "first fix mankind's lot on Earth". This line of thinking says that things like space colonization or fundamental research should be postponed until such a time as things are alright here. Truth is, things will never be that way. People forget that the term "Utopia" literally means "no place".
We will never be perfect. We will never be without problems. That is a poor argument against space travel though; if anything it means we have even more reason not to put all our eggs in one basket. And the notion that a few dead rocks are going to be spoiled by human habitation is utter nonsense - a rock is a rock. Ecology can be damaged, geology cannot.
I seriously doubt we'll be colonizing another inhabited planet anytime soon. Not because I think intelligent life is unlikely, but rather because I seriously doubt we can get any further than our immediate neighboring systems, and it is unlikely that they house intelligent life. Barring an FTL drive, we're stuck at C or less - that makes in system travel possible, and nearby star systems eventually accessible, but rules out the galaxy at large.
Re:Space Colonies: A Waste of Resources? (Score:3, Insightful)
And that is why Hawkings is who he is, and why you are who you are. He is trying to look ahead to the time when the earth, or even just the major life forms (human being one of the prominents) WILL be wiped out. While you, OTH, want what is and will always be unobtainable.
Many years ago (~35), I thought that communism was an interesting form of gov. Problem was, that there never has been a communist gov. There were attempts to set them up, but power mongers come along and take hold. Hitler "created" an enemy in the jews and later in other nations. Along the way, he built up the military, ran up a HUGE deficit, and slowly started taking away rights from the citizens. Of course, it turned out that most likely, Hitler arranged a serious of incidents that encouraged the citizens to turn away from liberties and worry about their security. The same thing happened in USSR with Stalin, and in China with Mao. In fact, this approach can and will happen in any country where they allow their leaders to do things quietly or allow them to get by with illegal actions. The problem is that no matter the intention, some new leader will come along and invent new enemies and even engineer things to go their way, such as say, trading hostages for weapons prior to being the head leader or invading a country on false pretext of nuclear weapons( It is for these reason I became a libertarian).
Hawkings has it right. We should be concerned about the long term survivability of mankind rather than the short term survival of a man.
Re:Space Colonies: A Waste of Good Planets? (Score:3, Insightful)