Professor Stephen Hawking has claimed that the only chance humankind has for survival is to inhabit new planets. This is due to the high rate at which we are using up our resources. Do you think we need to work quicker to find a solution to this problem or do we still have all the time in the world (no pun intended)?
The main problem on Earth is overpopulation. I think the Earth could sustainably support about a billion people at a high standard of living but we will soon be up to 7 billion. Not sure how we could ever get back down to 1 biillion but if we don't eventually earth will be so toxic most of us will die off anyway.
In our own solar system the best candidates for human colonization would probably either be Mars or the upper atmosphere of Venus. Living either place would be orders of magnitude more difficult than living on earth even if our planet was completely dead.
There is the argument that for long term survival mankind will need to colonize other solar systems or even galaxies. Our own star will consume all its hydrogen in a few billion years and evolve into a red giant but lots of other things could endanger mankind long before then. Our solar system could crash into a nearby one; even a near miss could cause enough havoc to end life as we know it. One of the nearby supergiant stars like Betelgeuse, Rigel or Antares could supernovae which could generate enough gamma rays to kill us and all life for hundreds of light years. To escape this we may need to go far far away.
All of this would just be delaying the inevitable. Our cosmos will either keep expanding until it becomes too cold and dark to support life or it will collapse back into a primordial atom to explode again into a new cosmos and start the whole thing over again; either way we're goners.
Personally I'm more worried about mankind surviving the next thousand years than about the next billion or trillion years.
I cant agree or disagree... no one knows how long this planet has...but i can say for certain that we have destroyed it....we got too greedy & just didnt hv a care in the world...dumping wastes, polluting the air, dumping garbage all over the place....now we are wondering what to do about it when it is too late to change things?! you can try to boost technology on the one hand, but you have everyone worried about a world war...so its kinda hard to be in 2 places at the same time...
If the world could just stop for a second & come together as a world to make a better place to make technology more advanced so try to save this nation rather then blow us all up maybe just maybe they may find a way to do just that...only I dont think it is going to happen any time soon!
We have been sleeping for way too long and there just might not be a way to fix it now...another planet is something we dont hv the time or resources to examine...you need time, and practice to find a planet that might suit all of our needs for agriculture...natural resources...also have to check weather & oxygen figures...do we know if we even have all that time to find it all out? and of so on which planet do we begin testing??? we already know that the moon/mars is out of the question...those are the 2 closest to the sun....if you go further away you may risk no exposure to heat...day light...humans need the warmth of the sun...helps our vitamin D resource not sure it can work for humans. :( Who knows maybe i am wrong...i am no scientist...what do I know? :)
I don't think that we need to "boost" technology. When we measure progress in sciences and technology it used to be in years, but now its more in months or weeks.We are already exponentially rowing in terms of technology. I know the military is trying to make a smaller and more efficient re-breather for underwater missions but if NASA makes a few adjustments, why cant we make affordable spacesuits? I think that if it does come down to some weird sci-fi situation and we do have to send all the people in Africa or Asia to Mars, which I personally don't think would happen, then enough people would be thinking and coming up with ways to make life possible. And we would make it work.
I think most of us get by in saying that it's tomorrow's problem, lol. I agree with him in that we are sucking the planet dry, but seeing as I will be long dead before the going gets too tough, I am in no hurry :P. For mankind as a whole though, I agree that the matter is starting to become pressing, though we should all be well aware that we have plenty of time.
