Stephen Hawking's warnings: What he predicted for the future
By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43408961
By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website
Stephen Hawking's fame was founded on the research he did on general relativity and black holes. But he often stepped outside his own field of research, using his recognition to highlight what he saw as the great challenges and existential threats for humanity in coming decades. His pronouncements drove headlines in the media, which sometimes proved controversial.
Leaving Earth
Hawking was clearly troubled that we were putting all our eggs in one basket - that basket being Earth. For decades, Hawking had been calling for humans to begin the process of permanently settling other planets. It made news headlines again and again.
Hawking's rationale was that humankind would eventually fall victim to an extinction-level catastrophe - perhaps sooner rather than later. What worried him were so-called low-probability, high impact events - a large asteroid striking our planet is the classic example. But Hawking perceived a host of other potential threats: artificial intelligence, climate change, GM viruses and nuclear war to name a few.
In 2016, he told the BBC: "Although the chance of a 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 thousand or 10,000 years.
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He was confident that humans would spread out into the cosmos by that time (given the chance), but added: "We will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43408961