Stephen Hawking stars in “Escape from Planet Earth”

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 03 December 2006 21:16

Science - Space

Stephen Hawking says that humans should colonize space and other planets. Well, of course we should!

One of the most brilliant scientific minds of our era has publicly said what any science fiction fan already knows: that we should colonize other planets. Why? To save ourselves from destruction, be it through nuclear, environmental, meteoric or other catastrophe.

Naturally, it is a very good idea. I can imagine that someone like Isaac Asimov would readily agree. Asimov populated the universe in spectacular fashion through his wonderful novels, after all. Asimov even said that if we don’t populate the Universe, aliens will beat us to it.

So we’d better get cracking, then. When one looks at things on a universal scale, it’s obvious that we are meant to be out there. With just our own solar system at our disposal, our current resource crises pale into insignificance. Up there are all the resources we could ever want, from water to minerals to almost anything else, aside from living vegetation, wood and other living beings.

Of course, they are probably out there, we are just yet to find them. Or they are yet to find us.

Hawking says that we can take the lead of shows like Star Trek to develop the equivalent of the ‘warp drive’ to get us from one location to another. With today’s technology, reaching the next star would just take too long. We need faster than light travel, and while that’s supposed to be a scientific impossibility, but in this day and age, nothing is impossible, or as Nike puts it, impossible is nothing.

Getting out into our own solar system will give us plenty of resources to bring back to Planet Earth. And while we can always terraform other planets, their inhospitable atmospheres and temperatures mean we’ll never be just walking around on the planet’s surface without a space suit.

Human beings need to find other ‘Class M’ planets, as Star Trek calls them. Planets that are like Earth, with life on them, or ones that can easily support life with a similar atmosphere to our own, and able to grow vegetation and have it safely perform photosynthesis through good ol’ sunlight.

While we may not find any Earth like planets in other solar systems in our lifetimes, we are destined to do so, if we don’t blow ourselves up first. That’s one of the signs of an intelligent species, after all.

Hawking also wants to go into space, and says that he hopes Richard Branson can take him there. It’ll be a fitting way to cap off his awesome career.

Stephen Hawking is right. The Universe awaits. We should be out there, exploring and discovering. Instead we waste billions, if not trillions, on wars. Crazy, huh? Hawking wants to go offworld. I say… Engage!