The Final Frontier

Photo © www.britishcouncil.org

My favorite modern scientist, Stephen Hawking, says humans must find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy the Earth.

The British astrophysicist told a news conference in Hong Kong that humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years.

We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system.

I always find talk like this interesting. Back in the day, I was enchanted with A Brief History of Time. I now expected Dr. Hawking to share about "likely" global catastrophic events like a giant asteroid crashing into earth, knocking us back to the Stone Age. Unfortunately, he was more political.

Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.

Oh, well. At least I could say, due to my wonderful publik skuul edukashun that this would be no big deal. After all, isn't it about survival of the fittest? Who cares if we wipe ourselves out - isn't that just nature eliminating a problem?

I don't care if Dr. Hawking sounded liberal - I still think he's great. But I won't cut any other liberal-sounding speaker such slack.