Move to new planet, says Hawking

I've been saying this to friends and family for years. If we don't get off of this rock we are most likely doomed as a species.

Interesting that he discounts Star Trek warp drive which uses matter-antimatter propulsion. And yet he advocates it's use. Just the primitive version.

Prof. Hawking is right. The undertaking will be massive but necessary for the survival of our species. Furthermore, colonizing only one planet will not guarantee survival either. Several planets and several tries on each will be necessary. One only needs to look to the history of colonization of North and South America by Europeans to see that. The colonists of the new planets will not likely have the advantage of trade to help with the establishment and maintenance of colonies. They will be truely on their own, perhaps for centuries.

At relativistic speeds, collisions with space rocks and dust particles will be likely and potentially devastating. The technology to prevent that would be interesting.

Engineers of the world, unite! The Final Frontier is before us!

(just kidding)

Survival schmurvival...I want to go to another planet to escape politicians.

How about we send the politicians to the new planet!

carmieSD7 I see you and I think alike! What's the chance of both of us posting the same thought at the same time? Kind of make me think it's a good idea.

I have a better idea. We build a giant spaceship and put all the politicians, lawyers, use car sales persons, etc. on it, send it to the furthest star we can find and we stay here. With a bit of luck the universe will be imploding by the time they get there. Any ideas who else is a candidate for relocation?

Don't waste the money. Put them in a decaying orbit around our own sun with just enough fuel to establish the orbit somewhat inside that of Mercury.

I'm with you, 68torino. I've been saying it for years as well. The article I read on Hawking's statement in the Red Herring indicated that he commented on nuclear war, asteroids, meteorites, etc ruining the Earth. Well, there might be something we could do about those (early detection system for asteroids and the like), but there is absolutely nothing we can do about the Sun burning out.

The end of Earth will not come anytime soon (I think), so we have a lot of time to work on this problem. However, it's not an easy problem. Curing AIDS will be way easier.

Bravo Professor Steven Hawking, but hold on a moment, why go to another star? when we could build hundreds of planets round our own Sun. We just happen to be in the dusty Orion Arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. Why not construct a few more thousand stars in our sector. Plenty of material there. As soon as the iron core reaches a critical mass, it sucks in it's own hydrogen. Read Dr. Adrian Berry "The Iron Sun" Adrian was consultant to NASA. Space travel might be fun, you could accelerate to near the speed of light, and after a 'relatively' short journey return say 4.32 billion years later, and have a look at the progress your new stars have made. Once a machine can make a machine that can make a machine etc. it's just a matter of grains of rice doubling up on the chess board. 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128..... A superconducting closed loop of wire in space becomes a magnet when a few million amps flow round. Most of that dust out there is highly magnetic.