Hawking: Humanity Only Has About 1,000 Years Left

Dr. Stephen Hawking

By JIM PURCELL

In a story by staffer Lindsay Dodgson filed today in Business Insider, it was reported that, according to renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, humanity only has about 1,000 years left before it becomes extinct.

Hawking made his disturbing prediction at a talk he was giving at the Oxford Union Debating Society.

Hawking, 74, said that extreme risks in the world, such as nuclear weapons, global climate change and mankind developing artificial intelligence and losing control of it are all likely causes for future destruction of the human race.

Hawking urges that humanity must leap beyond the "fragile" confines of earth and move out into other worlds, where pockets of humanity would survive even if there is a fatal cataclysm on our home planet.

In fact, the Kepler spacecraft was launched in 2009, with the mission of finding other worlds that may be habitable for mankind. Notably, this year, astronomers discovered a world they called Proxima B. The planet is roughly earth-sized and orbits the star Proxima Centauri's Goldilocks zone. It also lies about 4.2 light years away from earth.

Hawking challnges existence of black holes in new theory

Physicist Stephen Hawking claims there is no such thing as black holes, but instead Hawking seeks to redefine what does exist in place of the black holes he believes does not exist. According to Hawking, in their place Hawking theorizes of a more benign "apparent horizon," which temporarily holds matter and energy prisoner and then releases them in a more "garbled form."


Hawking points out that in "classical theory," being Einstein's Theory of Relativity, black holes, or "event horizons," possess qualities where nothing can escape, not even light.


Yet, in this theory, Hawking's view comes into conflict with the Theory of Relativity, proposed by physicist Albert Einstein in his landmark June, 1905 work titled "The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," later re-named the "Special Theory of Relativity." Subsequently, Einstein published his "General Theory of Relativity," in 1907, to address gravitational effects on light on Earth (with gravitational acceleration).


In his Special Theory of Relativity, two dynamics of physics came together for the first time under one roof, so to speak. First, the inclusion of the Principle of Relativity of Motion and the speed of light (accepted as a principle of nature).


I am a layman. While I do possess a graduate degree, it is in the field of religion. So, I am not the one to argue the credibility of any theory. I merely read those theories with some interest. Nevertheless, so accepted is Einstein's Theory of Relativity (or perhaps more rightly 'theories') that it is of some note when it is challenged in any part. And, for those who are so inclined, it is certainly worth at least cursory study.