STEPHEN HAWKING: WE HAVE 100 YEARS TO LEAVE EARTH

Whatever it would cost to ship a billion people to a terraformed Mars will certainly be vastly more than fixing Earth. (Laughing) I can tell you that right now. Now first, we can barely predict next week's weather. To believe that some time in the foreseeable future we're going to terraform Mars, turn Mars into an oasis where we can live on it again? I'm just not convinced of this.

Now, the concern that Mars does not have a magnetic field and you need some - it doesn't have an ozone layer - you need some things that would protect us here on earth. A lot of that's resolvable. I mean you can have radiation shields, you'd just live indoors, whatever. Life would be different on Mars, even if it were terraformed. I don't think that's the - that's a showstopper. But the urge to be a multi-planet species is high, and it can protect the species if something bad happens on one planet and on another. You protect the species, not the individual.

But if an asteroid's coming, I'd rather just deflect the damn asteroid and - rather than say, oh, half of you move here, so that when we die, you'll still be alive. (Laughing) That's not a satisfying solution to me. I'd rather use our clever engineering, our clever understanding of science, find solutions to the viruses that might threaten us, bring world peace, so that we don't kill ourselves with our nuclear weapons, and deflect the asteroid when it comes in.

I agree with DeGrasse Tyson. The money and resources spent on terraforming Mars would be high enough to deflect pretty much anything that the Universe is likely to hurl at us.

Neal Degrasse Tyson wrote:

Whatever it would cost to ship a billion people to a terraformed Mars will certainly be vastly more than fixing Earth. (Laughing) I can tell you that right now. Now first, we can barely predict next week's weather. To believe that some time in the foreseeable future we're going to terraform Mars, turn Mars into an oasis where we can live on it again? I'm just not convinced of this.

Now, the concern that Mars does not have a magnetic field and you need some - it doesn't have an ozone layer - you need some things that would protect us here on earth. A lot of that's resolvable. I mean you can have radiation shields, you'd just live indoors, whatever. Life would be different on Mars, even if it were terraformed. I don't think that's the - that's a showstopper. But the urge to be a multi-planet species is high, and it can protect the species if something bad happens on one planet and on another. You protect the species, not the individual.

But if an asteroid's coming, I'd rather just deflect the damn asteroid and - rather than say, oh, half of you move here, so that when we die, you'll still be alive. (Laughing) That's not a satisfying solution to me. I'd rather use our clever engineering, our clever understanding of science, find solutions to the viruses that might threaten us, bring world peace, so that we don't kill ourselves with our nuclear weapons, and deflect the asteroid when it comes in.

I agree with DeGrasse Tyson. The money and resources spent on terraforming Mars would be high enough to deflect pretty much anything that the Universe is likely to hurl at us.

Hawking predicted last year that the chance of a species-ending event on Earth was a “near certainty” when all possibilities were taken into consideration.

“Although the chance of disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next 1,000 or 10,000 years,” Hawking told the Oxford University Union in November.

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has warned that humanity needs to become a multi-planetary species within the next century in order to avoid extinction.

I've been reading a few sites that give the planet just 30 years or less before virtually every living thing on the planet goes extinct. Some include even microscopic life. Based on the ways we have been poisoning ourselves. Many of which we pay attention to, such as polluting our water and food and contributing to global warming. One major point they make is based on the numbers of nuclear tests conducted since WWII, and adding in Fukushima. Radiation is spread planet-wide, including below the equator, which had at one time been viewed as relatively safe from the consequences. I don't have enough education to sort all the bull from the truth in such things, but I do know so much radiation can't be a positive thing.