My Question for Stephen Hawking
Special to the End Times
Jul. 28, 2006, Beijing--The physicist Stephen Hawking has been in the news lately because of a question he posted on Yahoo! Answers. On this website, you can post a question on any topic, to which visitors can respond. Professor Hawking’s question is: “In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?”
Hawking had pre-emptively answered his own question a few weeks earlier at a conference in Beijing. He said that mankind was likely to make Earth uninhabitable in the next hundred years, and the best solution, he thought, was for mankind to start thinking about a new home—either man-made or on other planets.
"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." He also said, "We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system."
You can respond to Professor Hawking’s question at www.answers.yahoo.com until July 31. Over 24,000 people have so far answered Hawking’s question, including, I believe, all of the surviving Backstreet Boys.
I have been a big fan of Stephen Hawking since the publication of “A Brief History of Time,” which I am planning to read. I have to say, though, that as I’ve rolled his comments over and over in my mind, I find his solution deeply disappointing. So I have a question for Stephen Hawking.
I’m no astrophysicist—if you took everything I don’t know about the unimaginable vastness of the universe, you could probably fill the Augusta Civic Center—but I think that if we could actually overcome the technological barriers involved in creating safe and fast interstellar travel for millions (if not billions) of humans, as well as finding a habitable planet or constructing a huge space station for said humans, we are probably capable of fixing the problems that are now making earth uninhabitable.
Let’s consider the massive emissions of carbon dioxide that are causing global climate change. The technology to lower CO2 emissions significantly is already here: fuel-efficient cars, wind turbines, solar panels and cleaner power plants, for a start. And bicycles. Lots and lots of bicycles.
And even if we were able to overcome the unprecedented technological obstacles of interstellar travel and planetary exploration, if we didn’t first address the issues that are making the human race so hard to live with, I think we would probably end up ruining our new home or homes in reasonably short order.
Issues like resource scarcity. Here’s a story about Abraham Lincoln: A neighbor came upon him and two of his sons. The boys were crying, and the neighbor asked what the matter was. “The same thing that’s the matter with the whole world,” Lincoln said. “I’ve only got three walnuts, and each boy wants two.” I would like humanity to solve that age-old dilemma before we all spend five years together in a space ship.
I’m not even sure we’d make it on board the space ship in the first place. There are a lot of warring factions right now who have trouble sharing entire countries. I predict trouble if we start handing out boarding passes and expect people to form an orderly line.
You can see how the whole project gets pretty complicated pretty quickly—and we haven’t even gotten to the question of English soccer hooligans. (I want to be on the ship that has my family, the members of my college band, and the starting line-up of the 2004 Red Sox. You know, the party ship.)
A model already exists to help us solve these problems, and it’s working reasonably well right here on Planet Earth. Bhutan is a small monarchy in the Himalayas. In 1972 Bhutan’s king decided to replace the Gross National Product and start measuring his country’s progress with something called Gross National Happiness.
He believed that a truly happy human society can be founded on four pillars: sustainable economic development; conservation of the environment; promotion of national culture; and good governance. I met someone last week who had just traveled to Bhutan, and he said he has never seen a happier people.
It seems to me like a sensible plan but not very original. I’m sure many Socialists, tree huggers, peaceniks, and other un-American elements have already proposed such a thing.
Maybe Professor Hawking knows all this, and the whole find-a-new-planet idea is just a thought experiment. He knows that, on the path to making his solution a reality, the human race would have to solve the problems that are putting us into chaos, politically, socially and environmentally: our failure to meet the basic human needs of our fellows, our selfishness and myopia, our willingness to commit violence on a vast scale. So my question back to Professor Hawking is: are you serious?
-30-
Jul. 28, 2006, Beijing--The physicist Stephen Hawking has been in the news lately because of a question he posted on Yahoo! Answers. On this website, you can post a question on any topic, to which visitors can respond. Professor Hawking’s question is: “In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?”
Hawking had pre-emptively answered his own question a few weeks earlier at a conference in Beijing. He said that mankind was likely to make Earth uninhabitable in the next hundred years, and the best solution, he thought, was for mankind to start thinking about a new home—either man-made or on other planets.
"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." He also said, "We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system."
You can respond to Professor Hawking’s question at www.answers.yahoo.com until July 31. Over 24,000 people have so far answered Hawking’s question, including, I believe, all of the surviving Backstreet Boys.
I have been a big fan of Stephen Hawking since the publication of “A Brief History of Time,” which I am planning to read. I have to say, though, that as I’ve rolled his comments over and over in my mind, I find his solution deeply disappointing. So I have a question for Stephen Hawking.
I’m no astrophysicist—if you took everything I don’t know about the unimaginable vastness of the universe, you could probably fill the Augusta Civic Center—but I think that if we could actually overcome the technological barriers involved in creating safe and fast interstellar travel for millions (if not billions) of humans, as well as finding a habitable planet or constructing a huge space station for said humans, we are probably capable of fixing the problems that are now making earth uninhabitable.
Let’s consider the massive emissions of carbon dioxide that are causing global climate change. The technology to lower CO2 emissions significantly is already here: fuel-efficient cars, wind turbines, solar panels and cleaner power plants, for a start. And bicycles. Lots and lots of bicycles.
And even if we were able to overcome the unprecedented technological obstacles of interstellar travel and planetary exploration, if we didn’t first address the issues that are making the human race so hard to live with, I think we would probably end up ruining our new home or homes in reasonably short order.
Issues like resource scarcity. Here’s a story about Abraham Lincoln: A neighbor came upon him and two of his sons. The boys were crying, and the neighbor asked what the matter was. “The same thing that’s the matter with the whole world,” Lincoln said. “I’ve only got three walnuts, and each boy wants two.” I would like humanity to solve that age-old dilemma before we all spend five years together in a space ship.
I’m not even sure we’d make it on board the space ship in the first place. There are a lot of warring factions right now who have trouble sharing entire countries. I predict trouble if we start handing out boarding passes and expect people to form an orderly line.
You can see how the whole project gets pretty complicated pretty quickly—and we haven’t even gotten to the question of English soccer hooligans. (I want to be on the ship that has my family, the members of my college band, and the starting line-up of the 2004 Red Sox. You know, the party ship.)
A model already exists to help us solve these problems, and it’s working reasonably well right here on Planet Earth. Bhutan is a small monarchy in the Himalayas. In 1972 Bhutan’s king decided to replace the Gross National Product and start measuring his country’s progress with something called Gross National Happiness.
He believed that a truly happy human society can be founded on four pillars: sustainable economic development; conservation of the environment; promotion of national culture; and good governance. I met someone last week who had just traveled to Bhutan, and he said he has never seen a happier people.
It seems to me like a sensible plan but not very original. I’m sure many Socialists, tree huggers, peaceniks, and other un-American elements have already proposed such a thing.
Maybe Professor Hawking knows all this, and the whole find-a-new-planet idea is just a thought experiment. He knows that, on the path to making his solution a reality, the human race would have to solve the problems that are putting us into chaos, politically, socially and environmentally: our failure to meet the basic human needs of our fellows, our selfishness and myopia, our willingness to commit violence on a vast scale. So my question back to Professor Hawking is: are you serious?
-30-
posted by Hallovian at 4:14 PM
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