Stephen Hawking: We Might Have 1,000 Years Left on Earth (usatoday.com) 522
Stephen Hawking says the only way humankind can escape mass extinction is to find another planet. And the clock is ticking. From a report on USA Today:During a speech at Britain's Oxford University Union, Hawking detailed the history of man's understanding of the universe and reiterated that the future of humankind lies in space. "We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity," he said. "I don't think we will survive another 1000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet."
futurist (Score:5, Insightful)
Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man and solid scientist. His abilities as a futurist leave something to be desired.
Re:futurist (Score:5, Insightful)
Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man and solid scientist. His abilities as a futurist leave something to be desired.
He seem to be rather optimistic. I gave it no more than a few hundred years.
Re:futurist (Score:5, Insightful)
He seem to be rather optimistic. I gave it no more than a few hundred years.
300 years ago, people said that half the world would starve to death. And people would be fighting for the rats in the big cities in Europe. ~40 years ago, they said that people would be starving to death and fighting for the rats in cities to survive. Didn't happen in either case. It's not any different then the "we're going to run out of oil/gas/etc in 10 years." That has been repeated since the 1970's. Or "the water will be so toxic, that only the rich will afford clean water." Or "in the future students will only see trees in a museum" types of stuff. Remember ~6 years ago it was "we're now at peak oil!11111eleventy one" and everything is doomed? Except that isn't the case. It didn't happen, and the "better get used to $200/bbl because that's the new normal" didn't happen either.
You know what happens in every case? It's either full out propaganda bullshit, or individuals failing to understand that human ingenuity can solve actual problems. People like Norman Borlaug solved that food problem. Improvements in basic finding and extraction methods solved oil/gas problems. More trees are planted every year then are cut down, but that doesn't stop environmentalists from claiming that it's the end of the world. There's problems sure, there's problems with luddites and environmentalists screaming that "insert thing will destroy the world" or going absolutely insane and making claims like "*insert GMO* crop is poison" and people starving to death because of lies. Or the continued "nuclear energy will kill us all" bullshit.
We'll survive another 1000 years as long as we don't nuke ourselves, or have massive wars where even the most basic things like no chemical/biological warfare are thrown out the window. Ingenuity will see that we make those 1000 years.
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...Ingenuity will see that we make those 1000 years.
Stupidity will see we won't make the next 100. Or have you not been paying attention?
Re:futurist (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think we will survive another 1000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet.
He seem to be rather optimistic. I gave it no more than a few hundred years
I'm thinking 3 months tops, some time after Jan. 21st.
Oooh, I want to play! I predict that humanity will go extinct before I finish this sentence.
Damn!
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He is either being very optimistic, or he hasn't been following current events.
I'm thinking 3 months tops, some time after Jan. 21st.
Willing to make a friendly wager?
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We're really adaptable, I would think a population collapse wouldn't eliminate humanity personally.
Civilization will likely end, but I doubt humanity.
I wouldn't automatically presume that modern man would be the fittest of all Earth's creatures, nor necessarily fit enough to survive.
We're adaptable primarily because of society. Without it, we don't hold any big advantages over other animals. We've been able to shed protections that were unnecessary because society protected us. Modern man doesn't need to be especially strong or fast or equipped to survive winter without housing or weeks without food. We're not the same as our ancestors who survived
Re:futurist (Score:5, Interesting)
Population collapse will occur due to disease, lack of food, or lack of fresh water (possibly due to sea incursions). In any case the survivors will be able to extract a lot of useful materials and tools scavenging the ruins of society. So I think a small group of humans probably can survive most predicted and predictable calamities.
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Where do you think rain comes from? More ocean surface area, on a warmer planet, means MORE fresh water, not less.
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The bible says "The slum dwellers will do really well. Ghetto girls are really hot. The posh will be stuffed!" (Your translation might word it a bit differently, but perhaps you should not rely on a 5th century version of Google Translate).
Re:futurist (Score:4, Funny)
But how many could survive a winter without cable TV?
Re:futurist (Score:5, Funny)
Came in to find the guy who think hes smarter than Hawking. Found him in five seconds.
Re:futurist (Score:5, Insightful)
I may not be smarter than Hawking but I'm easily smart enough to recognize when even geniuses are speaking with the wrong orifice.
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I may not be smarter than Hawking but I'm easily smart enough to recognize when even geniuses are speaking with the wrong orifice.
Well I guess a speech synthesizer is a different orifice from usual but a lot of sense does come out of it.
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Lol, that's because the killer AIs he keeps predicting have taken over the speech synthesizer and are trying to fool the rest of us in to looking out for killer aliens while the AIs quietly take over the world.
Re:futurist (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. What I'd like to know is what makes anyone think that he's got the answers to our future when everyone else who's made such far-sighted doomsday predictions has so far demonstrated to be ridiculously wrong. Remember, by now billions were supposed to be starving to death, we'd be out of oil, the ice caps were supposed to be gone, and/or we'd have destroyed ourselves in nuclear hellfire.
I do agree that we should strive to spread out into space, so as to avoid leaving all our eggs in one basket, but unless its something completely out of our control, like a massive cosmic event, then sorry, I'm not buying the doom and gloom anymore. We've got plenty of serious problems we need to deal with without resorting to hysterics. Even if it doesn't mean the end of humanity, there are still some potentially bad scenarios we'd like to avoid. But every time scientists or environmentalists make wackadoo doomsday predictions that don't come true, it actually HURTS credibility of those that were more responsible.
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Devil's Advocate: There is a problem with the phrase "...but unless its something completely out of our control, like a massive cosmic event, then sorry, I'm not buying the doom and gloom anymore."
By the time humanity comes to the realization that something terminally wrong is occurring, it may well be too late to reach out into space as a second home.
If the calamity involves resource depletion, we will have run out of sufficient resources to create a self-sustaining colony somewhere else. If it involves so
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It is not deadly to stop using fossil fuels
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And there are waaaaaay to many buffalo for us to worry about hunting them. They just keep reproducing!
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They just discovered another 2 billion barrels today under Texas.
Off by an order of magnitude.
The USGS says "An estimated average of 20 billion barrels of oil and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are available for the taking in the Wolfcamp shale, which is in the Midland Basin portion of Texas' Permian Basin."
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I do agree that we should strive to spread out into space, so as to avoid leaving all our eggs in one basket, but unless its something completely out of our control, like a massive cosmic event, then sorry, I'm not buying the doom and gloom anymore.
The History channel has been running this series, "Doomsday: 10 Ways the World Will End": 1: Killer Asteroid, 2: Black Hole, 3: Rogue Planet, 4: Nuclear War, 5: Solar Storm, 6: Mega Eruption, 7: Gamma Ray Burst, 8: Earth Out of Orbit, 9: Alien Invasion, 10: Deep Sea Disaster
The episodes on Black Hole, Rogue Planet and Gamma Ray Burst are especially cheery.
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Re:futurist (Score:5, Insightful)
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I also wonder when people think that we can somehow figure out a way to travel at light speeds to get to another planet.
The door isn't quite closed on that yet. There's still a lot we don't know about the fundamental physics of space-time, with interesting work ongoing to understand just what exactly space is. However, it seems a safe bet that any sort of FTL "hack" will take a lot of energy - far beyond what we could do as a civilization today.
So, while I wouldn't say FTL is a "never", it's not in any of our lifetimes. Basically, it's far enough out that it's beyond the "prediction horizon" for technology. We should pla
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The alternative is to spend thousands of years traveling to another planet and potentially find it uninhabitable or die on the way. Any other planet would have a distinctly different gravity - one on which we have not evolved. How would we enable a breathable atmosphere? How would we remove toxins from the environment. It's quite probable that most of the environment would in one way or another be toxic.
The obvious answer is "engineering". We have a huge track record of solving hard problems. This is just a bunch of hard problems most which would already be solved in order for the dilemma to happen at all. If you're flying for thousands of years to another star system, then you've solved the gravity problem; how to enable a breathable atmosphere; and how to remove toxins from the environment.
How would we get a significant number of people to this planet?
It's just a matter of mass. So much habitat, resources, etc needs to be brought per person. So want more people to g
Re: Article is pretty light on details (Score:4, Informative)
I voted for "Extinction-Event Asteroid" rather than Clinton or Trump....
Re: Article is pretty light on details (Score:5, Funny)
Clinton wasn't going to do anything about climate change and her starting WW3 with Russia to appease the defence contractors that own her definitely wouldn't have helped the situation.
Now that's just not true! Nuclear winter would have set back global warming by decades, if not centuries. She was the only candidate willing to actually do something about global warming!
Re: Article is pretty light on details (Score:5, Funny)
Fry: This snow is beautiful. I'm glad global warming never happened.
Leela: Actually, it did. But thank God nuclear winter canceled it out.
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*no one cares about third parties, they just throw your vote away.
Re: Article is pretty light on details (Score:5, Insightful)
The crazy Americans are a minority
Citation needed.
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The crazy Americans are the 96% majority who voted for what they knew was a horrible candidate, on the grounds that they didn't want the other lizard to win.
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That is exactly what we are afraid of.
Trump is just a stupid greedy trust fund brat who is famous for being a bully and really doesn't have what it takes to lead.. while Pence is truly scary in his zealotry and bigotry (never mind that his doctrine directly counterfeits the bible he claims to believe)
Moving to another star? (Score:3)
In the span of 1000 years, I can certainly see humans being able to travel and inhabit other nearby planets but do we really think we'll be at a point where we can move large groups of humans >25 trillion miles away? Or does he see this more as we'll be putting civilization into space for centuries-long travel toward those other systems?
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It may take us a while to get there, but there is no reason to believe that it is impossible to reach star systems within 10 light years, perhaps more given:
1 - Our lifespan is likely to increase and it is too soon to predict by how much.
2 - We do not have to be in a rush to reach the destination, especially if we the ship is made as comfortable as the destination.
3 - Intermediary bases
4 - Stasis,
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The issue with time dilatation is that it really pays off as you approach the speed of light. Given t, the time of the traveller, T the time on earth,
t/T = sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2).
In other words, as you get very close to the speed of light, the right side of the equation gets very small and the inverse relation of t/T increases dramatically.
You will have to spend similar amounts of energy half way to your destination to slow down as you have been spending speeding u
That's about right, actually. (Score:2)
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based on the historical (and exponential) rate of humanity's technological progress, I had once heard that we could reasonably expect humanity to be interstellar by about the year 3000.
Growth has only been exponential for the last 100 to 150 years. There are many indicators that exponential growth is already coming to an end. I would not assume that we can continue this type of growth indefinitely.
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Growth has only been exponential for the last 100 to 150 years
What do you mean, growth is always exponential even a million years ago.
Here come the Psychlos! (Score:2)
"We won't survive another 1000 years ..." (Score:5, Insightful)
---
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
Humans are really adaptable (Score:2)
Disaster may hit the planet, but we've had hundreds of millions of years of multicellular life, and humans are likely the most adaptable variety yet. I don't think there's any reason to suppose humans will be completely wiped out by any global-scale disaster that doesn't wipe out essentially all land-based life. We haven't had one of those kind of disasters yet, so I don't see it happening any time in the next 1000 years.
Yes, there will likely be a disaster of global proportions, and I sure don't want to
I completely agree. (Score:2)
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Re:I completely agree. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to get Humans to curb their hardwired instinctual drive to reproduce is almost completely futile for various reasons ranging from religions frowning upon any sort of birth control methods, to people too poor to afford birth control, to people who just won't stop having kids -- and since geriatric medicine is getting better, people are living longer.
I'd agree except this has been fixed in the developed world with universal negative population growth among populations around longer than second generation immigrant. You keep talking about how people can't stop having kids... but they have.
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Population growth already slowing down. Many countries are already in demographic decline. It's not hard to imagine that the rest of the planet will follow and growth will stop by the end of the 21st Century or so.
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Re:I completely agree. (Score:5, Informative)
Call me when the overall curve is heading downhill.
<ring>
The developed world is calling you, and the second derivative is already negative globally. The world population growth rate should hit zero around 2050 and then begin declining.
To put it another way, the number of children born per year is already declining and has been for some time. The only reason the population isn't already declining is that the global population is still skewed young. Today's population growth is entirely due to the "filling out" of the age distribution. If you divide the population into five generations, each of 20 years -- so you have the 0-19, 20-39, 40-59, 60-79 and 80-99 groups -- There are about 2B in each of the first two groups, then it drops off rapidly. As the upper groups fill out over the next 35 years or so, you'll end up with roughly 2B per generation times five generations, for a total of about 10B people. Barring significant life extension, that will be the peak. Because the supply flowing into the first generation is slowly declining, the overall population will then begin to decline.
That's if current demographic trends continue, but it's likely that they'll accelerate. The biggest factors in reducing birthrates are (1) female education (2) infant survival rate and (3) wealth. Educated women who have confidence their children will survive and the resources to invest in them tend to have few children and invest heavily in the education and development of those fewer children. Since the trends in the developing world (the areas still producing lots of babies) are toward more education, better availability of medical services and increasing wealth in the developing world, it's likely that the current birth rate numbers will be further reduced.
No, the population crisis that is coming is one of not *enough* people, rather than too many. Some northern European countries are already facing this issue, especially since their systems for supporting the elderly require that there be plenty of young people working. Denmark, for example, has been running ads for several years now, encouraging couples to do the patriotic thing for their country by having babies.
The one thing that might change this is if medical technology progresses to allow the average person to live many decades longer. Add another 2B to the peak population for every 20 years of (universally-available) life extension.
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a totally arbitrary guess (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hey, Nations of Earth, let's all agree to not have nuclear weapons anymore, so everyone is safer, what do you say?
Nations of Earth:..sure, great idea! We're all for it!
One or two Nations, in private: LOL, We'll pretend to go along with this, and hide our nukes, so we can be dominant, LOL! What a bunch of idiots!
***Everything gets fucked up***
We need to grow up, as a species, before we're really mature enough to do things like this without someone being an underhanded dick about it.
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we = "civilization as we know it" (Score:3)
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Oy (Score:2)
Surviving on Earth is easier (Score:5, Insightful)
The technology we would need to survive on any other planet besides Earth would also make surviving any catastrophe that could b fall Earth -- including catastrophic climate change, nuclear winter, or a giant meteor -- trivially easy in comparison.
The worst thing that could conceivably happen to Earth, at least until the sun becomes a red giant billions of years in the future, is something like the above catastrophes would render it a barren wasteland utterly inhospitable to life. But every other planet is already a barren wasteland utterly inhospitable to life. If we could survive at all on any other planet, we could also survive anything that happens to Earth.
Call me when self-sustaining cities on the seafloor, Antarctica, or in the middle of the Sahara are normal things, and then we can talk about living on another planet just because it's there.
Wrong. (Score:2)
The worst thing that could conceivably happen to Earth, at least until the sun becomes a red giant billions of years in the future, is something like the above catastrophes would render it a barren wasteland utterly inhospitable to life.
Wrong.
The worst thing that could conceivably happen to earth is a meteor blasting it and all the things on it to chunky kibbles. Phaeton style.
And that could happen in 3 months if destiny wanted it so.
It could even happen without us ever knowing what hit us. Literally.
Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
earth shattering kaboom.
you should have gone with earth shattering kaboom.
Re: Surviving on Earth is easier (Score:2)
Re: Surviving on Earth is easier (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a rather trite definition of "unrecognizable". Let's take a look at a serviceable "one thousand year's ago" cultural landmark.
Magna Carta [wikipedia.org]
Now I don't know about others, but I'm having trouble finding anything in there that doesn't strike me as entirely modern—except for Edward I following in the footsteps of his father Henry (for a while we had largely fixed that problem, but then we brought the eternal water-powered millstone of aristocracy back to America by terminating estate tax; the new Edward is a trust-fund baby, stemming from a long line of trust fund babies—stretching as far back as the eye can see—but this has yet to come to fruition as we're presently but a half a generation into the inevitable upshot, so I'm not redefining "modern" just yet).
But obviously I cherry picked that example (plus I cheated by 200 years), so let's spin again.
History of gunpowder [wikipedia.org]
That pretty much allows one to build a modern rifle, supposing you have steel.
Steel [wikipedia.org]
Surely I'm still cheating, let's try again.
Hero of Alexandria [wikipedia.org]
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But every other planet is already a barren wasteland utterly inhospitable to life. If we could survive at all on any other planet, we could also survive anything that happens to Earth.
There are still two reasons that I can think of, for why it would still make sense to at least spread out to other planets. The first is the additional resources. If Earth becomes overpopulated or scarce of resources, spreading to another planet could mitigate that problem. The other is to serve as a kind of backup. If something truly sudden and catastrophic happens to Earth (e.g. struck by a comet) there would be another population of humans to carry on.
But neither of those provide an argument as to w
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The technology we would need to survive on any other planet besides Earth would also make surviving any catastrophe that could b fall Earth -- including catastrophic climate change, nuclear winter, or a giant meteor -- trivially easy in comparison.
Well, the assumption here is that the disaster is of a such magnitude that 99.9999% of the human race won't survive anyway. The question is whether we should send 0.0001% into space to carry on mankind's legacy. Personally I think sending 0.0001% into deep underground vaults in solid rock, supplied with all kinds of supplies and equipment to outlive the immediate effects and reboot life on Earth stands a much better chance than any other place in the solar system, unless the planet is pretty much obliterate
In case we cannot get sustainable (Score:5, Insightful)
The more sustainable we become as an economy, the longer we can stay. The less sustainable we are the less likely are we able to leave. Presently, we are not able to leave. To be able to leave, we need a machine which is sustainable in all aspects. In case it is not, we run out of material we can transform and entropy will destroy the machine and subsequently all inhabitants of it (yes a space ship/ark is a machine). However, in case we achieve the goal to be sustainable in the context of such space ship, we are also able to apply that on Earth.
Fun fact, we have 34 years to get CO2 neutral (this is being sustainable with the atmosphere) or else we are fucked up. Unfortunately, the US will not go in this direction for the next 4 years. So dear US citizens, 30 years left and the clock is ticking.
Beside the CO2 problem, we have also sustainability problems in electronics, food, water, cement, fishing/oceans, ecosystem-diversity etc. All of them have a point of no return and many of them are linked to others. Therefore, we should get on with it. Now is the time. Not tomorrow. NOW.
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>> we have 34 years to get CO2 neutral (this is being sustainable with the atmosphere) or else we are fucked up.
Where did you get this from? Cite references please.
I can personally remember that experts have been saying "we only have around 35 years" since the 70's, so I would have guessed that by now it would be much less than that.
I also suspect there is a real chance that we've already blown it and its being hushed up, in which case we are already doomed to runaway global warming.
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Fun fact, we have 34 years to get CO2 neutral (this is being sustainable with the atmosphere) or else we are fucked up. Unfortunately, the US will not go in this direction for the next 4 years. So dear US citizens, 30 years left and the clock is ticking.
Just because out newly elected leader may not understand enough about science beyond how much it costs to research (if that much), it doesn't mean US scientists and businesses (OK, most businesses can't see beyond the profit margin but some understand long term planning) will not keep working in the right direction.
1000 years is a very long time (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone [even Stephen Hawking] can say anything meaningful about where we'll be 1000 years from now. Did anyone in the year 1016 A.D. foresee conditions today?
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I don't think anyone [even Stephen Hawking] can say anything meaningful about where we'll be 1000 years from now. Did anyone in the year 1016 A.D. foresee conditions today?
Our capability to understand our entire planet is FAR greater today than it was in 1016 A.D., where a humans understanding of the "world" and resources to exist may have been restricted to the island they were trapped on.
Today, we understand the global impact of the human population increasing 3x - 30x. We can measure resources and use computer models to understand the impact, so yes, I do believe we can have meaningful predictions.
Unfortunately, due to humans consuming more and more finite resources and o
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Those two things seem at odds.
Seems like all we need to do is have less kids, wipe a few countries off the map, advance tech, and let a few billion die off in coastal areas.
Doesn't mean extinction by any means.
Let a few billion die off? We can't even get assisted suicide to be accepted en masse due to the moral argument in society today, so let's not dismiss that as trivial.
It would have to be something that offers a more "acceptable" death. You know, like socialized healthcare.
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Well, surely the elite monk who got there against all odds would have had a special ability to see the problems of the future, right? LOL
If you go from this stuff to Feynman's memoirs there is very big, refreshing contrast. Feynman would see a giant pile of unknowns in the future and know he wouldn't be able to calculate a result, and that it is also out of his field so he should finish a solid calculation before trying to dictate the answer to the world.
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No basis for quite so much pessimism (Score:2)
Well, so far Homo sapiens has survived on the order of a million years on this "fragile" planet. Obviously the current exponential growth in population and consumption of material resources cannot continue for even 1000 years, but all that means is that our lifestyle WILL change markedly one way or another, and very probably our quality of life will be greatly reduced. But even if there is a mass die-off of 99-99.9% of the population, the species will continue. That goes even for the case of a catastrophic
+1 point for taking the long view (Score:4, Insightful)
But -100 for taking a bit too long a view.
Technically there's no reason we can't actually populate other planets or solar systems in 1000 years if we decide to. On the other hand there's no reason we can't sustain human culture on this planet for another billion years if we decide to.
So sure, by all means lets investigate technologies to more efficiently explore our surroundings but let's spend a bit more effort on sustainability in the balance. For starters we could stop spending the vast majority of our energy arguing over issues that don't matter one bit (where to go to the bathroom, sexual preference of the person 4 doors down).
If we can't figure out how to solve sustainability problems moving to another planet is just a change of scenery.
Typical (Score:2)
Sure, make a prediction that no one will be around to check.
1000 years, (Score:2)
I doubt we have 1000 years left on earth. The current max lifespan seems to be about 115. Even with modern advancements in science I doubt we'll make it to having 1000 years left on earth.
Now, our descendants might be here in 1000 years, but we won't be- at least not in one piece any more.
150 years, tops (Score:2)
Culling when the Poles Flip (Score:3)
A lot of geologists think we'll have a pretty decent culling of the human population when the poles flip. That could happen in our lifetime or thousands of years from now. The main contention is the parts of the Earth surface are going to get fried with radiation when that happens. Stock up on sun block and lead lined suits.
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I've been reading about the poles reversing for years, but haven't heard much in the way of how it would affected humanity, other than GPS. Got any info I can read up on?
I'm a geologist myself, but with a focus on Karst systems.
The idea being the radiation blocking the magnetic field of the planet does prevents damage to life on the surface.
During pole flip, the magnetic field is chaotic and lets more of the sun and interstellar radiation through.
Saaaaay what? (Score:2)
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You're assuming you're actually better than a cockroach, when in fact, you are just the same. Except I believe cockroaches will outlive humans.
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You're assuming you're actually better than a cockroach, when in fact, you are just the same.
You're the one making an assumption.
Except I believe cockroaches will outlive humans.
Of course.
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Which is what people are saying about us now. That we are artificial constructs in some big super computer.
So ... Inception ?
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All scientists know we only have 998 years left.
He forgot to carry a two.
Re:why do we care? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:why do we care? (Score:4, Interesting)
Another unique ability that homo sapiens has? Planning for the future.
Next quarter's profits? Sure. Next year and beyond? Not so much.
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I could cherry pick a period of growth in a rodent population cycle that would show the same type of result, but neither would result in a prediction of boiling off the oceans. You have to look at the complete cycle to make any sort of predictions about it. What should jump out at you right away in that type of chart is that it is a subset of a cycle, and so you have no idea what the rest of the curve is. It is not rational to be given a chart of part of a cycle and assume it grows unchecked to an extreme r
Re:why are people reporting on this? (Score:5, Funny)
and then walking it back.
That's not how he rolls.
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and then walking it back.
That's not how he rolls.
C'mon folks, where's the +1Funny love here? That's the best doubly-true double entendre I've read in ages.
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The reason the sciences work, is everything can be challenged, and everything is potentially refutable -- even by the scientist who asserted it in the first place. If anything, I have more respect for someone who can say "I was wrong".
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The planet's not fragile, but us humans collectively take that as a challenge.
So now Hawking's advocating the "interstellar plague of locusts" future for humanity, just like Newt Gingrich. Who woulda thought?
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What are the odds? How many people get it overall?
About 3.9 per 100,000 people, at least in the USA, according to this paper. [cdc.gov]
And why him specifically?
Genetics and/or environmental factors. Nobody knows for sure. The fact that he's a white male stacked the deck against him.
Even to me, as a non-religious person, it appears like a punishment of some sort.
Then I think you need to re-evaluate your concepts of morality. People who get ALS don't "deserve" to get it.