Credit: NASA
What about beyond the Solar System? Our observations indicate that a significant fraction of stars have planets around them.
So far, we can detect only giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, but it is reasonable to assume that they will be accompanied by smaller Earth-like planets. Some of these will lay in the habitable zone where the distance from the stars is the right range for liquid water to exist on their surface.
There are around a thousand stars within 30 light-years of Earth. If just one per cent of each had Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone, we would have 10 candidate new worlds.
We can revisit it with current technology, but we should make interstellar travel a long-term aim. By long term, I mean over the next 200 to 500 years.
The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years. Civilisation began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. But, if the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Stephen Hawking is an astrophysicist and the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, in England.
This article is an edited extract of a lecture given by Stephen Hawking at George Washington University, to mark the 50th Anniversary this year of the U.S. space agency NASA.
what a nut!
this nutjob lives off the state,he will never speak truth to power because his kind live on the state teat.all this space travel will be paid for by the state in the form of taxes stolen from you by the barrel of a gun.these nutty professors need to get real jobs and quit wasting our time and money on this shite.
Your a nut!
Steven Hawking is a genius. He is thinking in the long term.. I don't think taxes are fair but whats 1/4 percent of our GDP. I'm sure we could take it from our defense budget and do just fine. How about bring all the troops home for every country in the world. That would equal the money we need plus some. Also what he's trying to tell you is that this "new space race" could help mankind. This is how new technology is created. Its a goal. In the long term it could benefit mankind. Just look at the computer you are using and the internet. This is what science has provided for you! You need to wake up and realize that science and research is something we should be spending our money on. Not wars and bailouts. Want to debate more? AIM steve196982
Don't think taxes are fair?
Hahah. So how are you planning on paying for your roads? Airports? Regulatory bodies? Power? Water? Defense?
We need government.
Don't feed this troll
Hmmm...this poster is probably a tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy-theorist offended by Prof Hawking's denigration of ufo believers as "cranks" and "weirdos"....just a thought.
I am no fan of big
I am no fan of big governments and repression and all, but I do say these lunatics whining about taxes being taken at the barrel of a gun will be the death of us all. What do they propose? Every large number of people will need government and policing and collective infrastructure. If you don't have collective governmental programs and investments and tax you live in a country like Somalia - where there's is nothing except warlords.
Nut job?
Perhaps...but then most of those 'what brought us to this dance' were or are. Hawking is simply stating what most of us that lived through the shut down of the NASA moon ventures said at the time.
Now, here we are, 35 years later, more than 6 trillion poured into the failed 'great society' with the same percentage of poor now that we had then, and believing that had we not changed direction in this country we would have a well established moon colony today and probably reaching out with manned missions to Mars.
Shalom Freedman
Its encouraging that Stephen Hawking is concerned about the future of the human race, and is not of the party of the 'trans-humanists' or those who believe the 'Singularity' is going to lead to our replacement by a more advanced kind of Intelligence. I also suspect that should we not bring disaster upon ourselves in the coming years mankind will move into space. It seems to me that humanity by its very nature seeks challenge and adventure, new worlds of exploration and creation. And the vast universe lies out there if not like a dream, than at last like a rough and rugged frontier which may give in time new worlds.
Looking in, then out
If you really want humans to go to other star systems, you may need to re-engineer humans either so they can survive on minimal provisions and oxygen (and won't get bored) or develop clones that "hatch" when the ship approaches the target, receive training and then head out. Perhaps space travel starts with the human genome.
SETI's findings
The astronomers who are engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) certainly don't believe that the project has failed as this article implies. The truth is that SETI has been impeded for a number of reasons--cost, limited telescope time, and the vastness of the universe.
In the past, most SETI searches have relied on existing radio telescopes. While this allows searches to be conducted on large instruments such as the mammoth 305 m Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico, the amount of telescope time available is necessarily restricted.
Now SETI has a brand new tool--the Allen Telescope Array. This instrument will allow a targeted SETI search to proceed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
I hope that everyone reading this article (and Dr. Hawking) will not prematurely designate SETI a failure. The search for ET is really just beginning.
Ellen Jackson, author
THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE
LOOKING FOR LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
Columbus/Space analogy
I don't dispute the argument that we should push into space. I do take issue with the analogy between Columbus and Space exploration. Columbus and and his backers had the objective of finding a route to India. They knew it existed. The risk was technological, not existential. Space exploration carries the additional existential risk that there is no other place that will sustain human life without cost far in excess of any surplus that could be gained. This is a problem. Thanks.