GettyBad news for absolutely no one alive today but for those kicking around 600 years from now: the Earth will eventually be destroyed in a ball of fire.
Well, at least that’s what Professor Stephen Hawking thinks.
The legendary physicist reckons the growing number of the world’s population paired with the demand for energy will lead to humanity’s demise.
The alternative? Reach for the stars. And not in the cheesy S Club 7 way.
GettyStephen Hawking has implored would-be investors to back a project that could in the future send man to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system in our solar system.
He recently spoke about the Breakthrough Starshot project via video link at the Tencent WE Summit in Beijing, the Daily Mail reports.
He said:
The idea behind this innovation is to have the nanocraft on the light beam.
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.
GettyJust FYI, the Alpha Centauri is 25 trillion miles away. That’s 4.37 light years.
Using today’s fastest space shuttle, it would take a whopping 30,000 years to get there. Imagine the time it takes waiting for your McDonald’s order at 3am after a night out and times it by about eight.
However, before a manned mission, Hawking believes a nanocraft probe could reach the place in 20 years.
GettyBack in June, the British cosmologist made similar remarks in Norway.
Speaking at the Starmus Festival Festival in Trondheim, Hawking asked nations to re-ignite their space exploration programs and build a moon base by 2020 before heading out to Mars in 2025.
He said:
Spreading out into space will completely change the future of humanity. I hope it would unite competitive nations in a single goal, to face the common challenge for us all.
A new and ambitious space programme would excite [young people], and stimulate interest in other areas, such as astrophysics and cosmology.
NASAHawking also admitted that the Earth is facing so many threats that he struggles to remain positive.
The internationally celebrated scientist claims that the ‘disastrous gift of climate change’ has ruined our planet with resource shortages, rising temperatures, deforestation, and the extinction of animal species being just some of the issues we face.
Hawking also slammed President Donald Trump, saying that he had made a serious and wrong decision in pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
GettyIn the past Hawking has claimed that asteroid strikes, epidemics, over-population and climate change could potentially cause the fall of mankind and he’s suggested that humanity leave the planet before.
Only last year Hawking said that humanity wouldn’t last another 1,000 years on this ‘fragile’ Earth and that exploring the galaxy for other habitable planets was our only salvation.
GettySo yeah, as much as we can try and gloss over this one guys, the truth is Earth has an expiry date. Whether it’s today or in 600 years, eventually every single thing we have achieved as humans is going to be destroyed and rendered irrelevant, unremembered forever until the end of time.
Have a great Tuesday!
