霍金:地球將在200年內毀滅

英國著名物理學家史蒂芬•霍金日前在接受美國著名網站BigThink訪談時，再曝驚人言論，稱地球將在200年內毀滅，而人類只有移民外星球才能繼續存活。他表示，在未來200年內，人類將面臨巨大的危險，而且危機次數可能超過以往任何時候；人類必須離開地球移居到外太空，否則會從地球上消失。對此，密歇根大學天文物理學家表示，距離地球最近的星體在4.2光年之外，用現在的飛行速度大概需要5萬年才能到達，如果用光速飛行的話則需要4.2年。看來，移居另外一個星球將是人類面臨的一項重大挑戰。

Humans: It’s time to abandon Earth or face extinction.

It could be the plot of a summer blockbuster, but this prediction isn’t science fiction. It’s a glimpse of the future, according to famed British scientist Stephen Hawking.

"I see great dangers for the human race," he said in an interview with global forum Big Think. "There have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question of touch and go."

Hawking, an award-winning physicist, says humans must evacuate our home planet within the next two centuries and expand into space to survive.

"I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space," he said. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million."

Hawking, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom last year, has recently voiced many concerns about the future of life on Earth.

In April, he spoke pragmatically about his fear of aliens in an interview for the Discovery Channel.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said. "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."

But Hawking says he is still hopeful for the future of humanity.

"I'm an optimist," he told Big Think. "We have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years. But if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space."

Getting to another planet will prove a challenge, not to mention colonizing it for humanity. University of Michigan astrophysicist Katherine Freese told Big Think that "the nearest star [to Earth] is Proxima Centauri which is 4.2 light years away. That means, if you were traveling at the speed of light the whole time, it would take 4.2 years to get there" -- or about 50,000 years using current rocket science.