Professor Stephen Hawking says humans must leave Earth in 100 years, or else

In an upcoming TV documentary, British physicist Stephen Hawking revives his prediction that humanity will have to spread out a new home in space within 100 years in order to ensure the species’ survival.

A hundred years is a lot sooner than Hawking’s previous predictions. In November, he gave a similar warning — but said we had a comparatively lengthy 1,000 years to find a new spot to carry on the future of humankind:

“Although the chance of 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 1,000 or 10,000 years … By that time, we should have spread out into space and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race.”

So where are we going to go? Thankfully, Musk has said humans should make it to Mars in the near future.

“If things go according to plan, we should be able to launch people probably in 2024 with arrival in 2025,” he said, according to Time.

The upcoming documentary series with Hawking is a reboot of BBC’s Tomorrow’s World. Per Tony Hall, director-general of the BBC:

“We’ve come together behind a simple, and very bold ambition — to equip all of us with the knowledge and understanding we need to make sense of our lives and the future … Whether it’s the rise of robotics or the demise of antibiotics, traveling to Mars or the arrival of 3D printed food, science is changing the world at an extraordinary pace.”

Let’s just hope science changes the world fast enough for our species to escape it.

Agencies/Canadajournal