Stephen Hawking : humanity must prepare to become interstellar

Faced with the great crises awaiting humanity, Stephen Hawking reiterated during an intervention in Beijing the urgency of preparing for the interstellar journey. According to him, we have half a millennium: “by 2600, the Earth will turn into a big ball of fire. 

Last Year during a video presentation at the Tencent Web Summit in Beijing, the famous physicist Stephen Hawking said again how much time he thinks it is time for humanity to find a second home.

The researcher alludes of course to the great ecological, biological, climatic, energy, demographic and consequently economic crises which are underway or which are looming on our horizon (2100). The vital prognosis of the Earth - at least, of the biosphere - is under way.

"By 2600, the Earth will turn into a big ball of fire," he warns. Humanity must make plans to leave the planet, otherwise we risk extermination. So if we still want to live "another million years," we must "boldly go where no one has gone before," reports The Sun.

Illustration of the nanoprobe project to explore Proxima b. © Breakthrough Starshot

Breakthrough Starshot, a first step towards interstellar exploration

A few months ago, Stephen Hawking had already said his conviction that the future of humanity is elsewhere, in space, in search of other lands: "We lack space and the only places to go are the other worlds. It's time to explore other solar systems. Lying down may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. ”

Finally, Stephen Hawking invited the investors present at the meeting to take part in Breakthrough Initiatives which he supports. Seeking life elsewhere and ways to communicate with other extraterrestrial civilizations are the motivations of this program. And there is also Breakthrough Starshot, a project that plans to send nanosensors pushed by lasers to the star closest to us, Proxima Centauri. It is of course, for him, a way to prepare our future.

Also present in Beijing, Pete Worden, former director of NASA's Ames research center and now director of Breakthrough Starshot, said, "Hopefully soon after the middle of the century we will have our first image from another planet that could support life in orbit around the nearest star. "

Except for a collapse of our civilization, the Alpha system of the Centaur seems within our reach.

Humanity will have to leave the Solar System if it is to survive

Article by Jean Étienne published on December 14, 2006

The hypothesis of a major catastrophe destroying humanity is not new. However, the more we study the protohistory of our planet or even of our Solar System, the more this possibility seems to move away from simple conjecture to become plausible, even probable in the more or less distant future.

It is on this observation that Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant physicists of our time, has based himself to estimate that if humanity wants to survive, it will one day have to think of emigrating on at least another planet compatible with life.

"The survival of the human race will be threatened as long as it remains concentrated in its entirety on a single planet. Disasters like a collision with an asteroid are perfectly capable of destroying us all without leaving a single survivor. When we have been able to create Autonomous colonies in deep space, our future will be assured. But conditions similar to those we know on Earth existing nowhere in our Solar System, we will necessarily have to join an extrasolar planet, "he recently stated in substance in the columns of the Daily Telegraph.

Perfectly aware that the current chemical propulsion systems of spacecraft would not allow to undertake such a journey except by agreeing to devote a few tens of millennia to it, Stephen Hawking proposes to develop the idea of ​​the deformation of space which would allow , in theory at least, to move instantly to the destination regardless of the distance. This theory, the study of which is barely in its infancy, postulates that an object could cross enormous distances by taking a shortcut between two points of a curved space folded in on itself, or by passing by a "wormhole", a sort of spatio-temporal vortex whose concept remains currently confined to science fiction ... But have we never found that if we let time run out, reality ends well often go beyond the most unbridled science fiction concepts?

Stephen Hawking with the device allowing him to communicate thanks to a computer. © DAMTP, University of Cambridge

Unfortunately, our means of travel are likely to remain subject for a long time to the limit of the speed of light, approximately 300,000 km / second, which places us the closest star to 4 years of travel excluding the acceleration phases. and slowdown on arrival. It is still necessary to reach this speed.

"We can approach the speed of light using the energy produced by the annihilation of matter and antimatter," adds Professor Hawking. "Thus, it will be possible to win the nearest star in about six years, but for the crew subjected to the effects of the theory of relativity, this period will appear much shorter".

A long-standing quadriplegic, speaking with a specially-built speech synthesizer, Stephen Hawking is the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, the same man who had been employed three years ago. centuries by Sir Isaac Newton. Specializing in Cosmology, Relativity and Quantum Gravitation, he is often considered one of the greatest minds of our time, sometimes even the greatest, all ages combined.