Here To Go
Jun. 14th, 2006 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauHawking issues dire warning
Spread out from Earth or die: In face of disaster, leaving our planet is key to survival, physicist suggests
Sylvia Hui, The Associated Press
Published: Wednesday, June 14, 2006
HONG KONG -- The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday.
Humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years, the British scientist told a news conference.
"We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth -- unless we go to another star system," added Hawking, who came to Hong Kong to a rock star's welcome Monday. Tickets for his lecture today are sold out.
Hawking said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.
"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."
The 64-year-old scientist, author of the global bestseller A Brief History of Time, uses a wheelchair and communicates with the help of a computer because he suffers from a neurological disorder called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
One of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation, Hawking has done groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe, proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end.
[snippety comments from other professors and pundits, references to Carl Sagan and Jodie Foster snippety-snipped]
B Mashina
Only one day is left
only one day
we are leaving the others
we're going away
Today we all steal
animals we are
possession is lost
Our souls are from the wild
and wings to reach the sky
let the sun fall into the ocean,
let the earth erupt in flame
It is enough to have the strength
and knowledge
to raise our dream machines
into the sky
Let them sleep who do not know
the final day is here
the very last
and we leave at dawn
Millions of machines on nitroglycerin
Thunder in us
There is no force no money and no power
To stop us now and change our fate
Before we rise
Now every problem is destroyed
We raise our hands and bodies to the peak
Into the Universe - towards the stars we go
Sending machines up to the sky
[Chorus]
Machines we are sending to the skies
Above us all
And leave behind those who don't know
Of the final day
We leave in sleep those who don't know
(and) we leave at dawn
We are driven by the B-machine
(Wild B-machine - that never stops)
- Laibach
Spread out from Earth or die: In face of disaster, leaving our planet is key to survival, physicist suggests
Sylvia Hui, The Associated Press
Published: Wednesday, June 14, 2006
HONG KONG -- The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday.
Humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years, the British scientist told a news conference.
"We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth -- unless we go to another star system," added Hawking, who came to Hong Kong to a rock star's welcome Monday. Tickets for his lecture today are sold out.
Hawking said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.
"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."
The 64-year-old scientist, author of the global bestseller A Brief History of Time, uses a wheelchair and communicates with the help of a computer because he suffers from a neurological disorder called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
One of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation, Hawking has done groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe, proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end.
[snippety comments from other professors and pundits, references to Carl Sagan and Jodie Foster snippety-snipped]
B Mashina
Only one day is left
only one day
we are leaving the others
we're going away
Today we all steal
animals we are
possession is lost
Our souls are from the wild
and wings to reach the sky
let the sun fall into the ocean,
let the earth erupt in flame
It is enough to have the strength
and knowledge
to raise our dream machines
into the sky
Let them sleep who do not know
the final day is here
the very last
and we leave at dawn
Millions of machines on nitroglycerin
Thunder in us
There is no force no money and no power
To stop us now and change our fate
Before we rise
Now every problem is destroyed
We raise our hands and bodies to the peak
Into the Universe - towards the stars we go
Sending machines up to the sky
[Chorus]
Machines we are sending to the skies
Above us all
And leave behind those who don't know
Of the final day
We leave in sleep those who don't know
(and) we leave at dawn
We are driven by the B-machine
(Wild B-machine - that never stops)
- Laibach
