Stephen Hawking Says Space Colonization Needed for Long-Term Survival

Telegraph ^ | Tuesday October 16, 2001 | Roger Highfield

[Urbane_Guerilla]

Hawking is just being trite ... if we survive, we will colonize space.

His comment is absurd because the colonization of space has nothing to do with survival. Colonization of space will proceed along the same temporal track as our survival as a species. But the two will have nothing to do with each other, until we colonize space. Then we might survive because we colonized space. But even then we might not survive, because the same technology which permits us to colonize space might permit us to destroy all forms of life in the universe, regardless.

[darth]

Horses evolved in South America and later spread north then over the land bridge to Asia. Yet when Europeans got here...no horses. My hypothesis: Some bug, e.g., equine encephalitis, naturally mutated into a highly virulent and lethal form. Now imagine a bunch of scientists in third world tyranies trying to cook up the most lethal bugs possible with less-than-perfect containment. Its only a matter of time.