The late Stephen Hawking predicted that humanity would not stay on Earth for another 1,000 years, and even said when would “the end of the world” take place?… Without denying or confirming the assertion of the famous British physicist, NASA is not much more optimistic. Is the apocalypse coming soon? And what are the possible loopholes?
If Nostradamus' predictions for 2025 are alarming, wait until you see those of Stephen Hawking, a much more reliable source, for a few hundred years. The famous English theorist, who died in 2018, will not live long enough to know if his hypotheses about the “end of the world” were true -and neither are we, for that matter. As our colleagues at JVTech recall, in 2016, the astrophysicist declared to the BBC, shortly before his death:
Although the likelihood of a catastrophe on planet Earth in any given year may be quite low, it accumulates over time and becomes a virtual certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years.
And during a video conference given during the Tencent Web Summit in Beijing in 2017 (via The Sun), he was even more precise and alarmist:
From here to 2600, the Earth will turn into a big ball of fire. Humanity must make plans to leave the planet, otherwise we risk extermination.
The culprits? There exponential growth of human beings (in 2024, there are 8.025 billion of us) and the overconsumption electricity and energy.
NASA remains neutral towards Stephen Hawking
There have been hundreds of apocalyptic predictions about the end of the world since the beginning of humanity. But Stephen Hawking is a scientific source to take seriously : the theoretician relies on diagrams and rational data to support his complex calculations. However, does NASA share this pessimistic hypothesis? Last week, the US space program agency told Newsweek that despite the rumors, she never confirmed the astrophysicist's words.
NASA has not made this statement. For more than 50 years, NASA has been studying our planet, providing information that directly benefits humanity and producing observations that can only be collected in space and that address some of the areas Hawking mentioned.
An ambiguous press release, which cannot be decided neither in favor nor against Stephen Hawking's theory.
Is the solution in the stars?
This is what the first colony on Mars could look like. pic.twitter.com/GYV7iKhHts
— Mato (@matijagav) https://twitter.com/matijagav/status/1863490245901119590?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Is this catastrophic prediction about the end of humanity inevitable? Or can Man still save himself? To this question, Stephen Hawking advocated looking up to the stars : according to the theorist, the establishment of interplanetary colonies could prove vital in the future. In 2008, he established a parallel between the conquest of America and that of space!
We are in the situation of Europe in 1492. Some might well have said that it was a waste to send Columbus to find something that did not exist. And yet, the discovery of the New World profoundly changed the Old. Think, we wouldn't have the Big Mac. […] Setting out to conquer space will have an even greater effect. This will completely change the future of the human race, and perhaps even determine if we have a future.
A look directed towards the aerospace he shared with Elon Musk, who this year unveiled SpaceX's impressive program for settle on Mars. And this is not the only subject that brings these two visionaries together: both men also have serious fears about artificial intelligence… In 2015, they even co-signed an open letter calling for a ban on artificial intelligence. use of this tool for new military vehicles.
And you, what do you think of Stephen Hawking's predictions (and solutions)?
