As the year winds to a close, Big Think has pulled together a list of their Most Popular Videos of 2010. Perhaps the biggest thinker on the list is Stephen Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist, who issues a stark warning. “Our only chance of long term survival, is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.” Population growth, limited resources, climate change – these pressures could drive the human race into extinction within two centuries, and possibly even one. That makes space – planets beyond our own – the next great frontier.
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Our real problem is this kind of swashbuckling thinking. We need to stop taking future technological advance for granted and instead start the task of repairing our damaged planet, which for now remains our only home. This can be justified on risk-cost-benefit grounds alone, and technology will obviously be central. But dreaming about the stars is not the way to start.
I’m am a firm follower of Stephen’s and I support his contentions regarding our need to get off this planet and into the cosmos a.s.a.p.