But in the very near future this, most likely, will not happen
The famous theoretical physicist and popularizer of science Stephen Hawking expressed the opinion that people themselves created the main threats to humanity that exist today. Among such threats, the scientist first of all singled out nuclear war, global warming and viruses created through genetic engineering.
According to Stephen Hawking, with the development of science and technology, mankind only increases the number of options by which everything can “go wrong,” reports the BBC.
“Although the likelihood that a global catastrophe on Earth will happen right this year is small, the chances of it are constantly increasing, so it will almost certainly happen in the next thousand or ten thousand years,” Stephen Hawking said.
The only salvation for humanity can be the colonization of other planets. In this case, even a disaster that could destroy life on Earth will not become a sentence for humans as a species. “However, at least in the next few centuries, we will not be able to create colonies in space that are capable of self-sufficiency, so during this period we should be especially careful,” the physicist noted.
The lecture in which Hawking voiced his views was devoted to a slightly different topic. The scientist and his colleagues Malcolm Perry and Andrew Strominger have developed a theory according to which black holes absorb information not irrevocably, and part of it gets out in the form of photons with almost zero energy, or so-called "soft hair".
This is not the first time when, perhaps, one of the most famous scientists today sees science as the source of the main threats to humanity. Hawking had previously stated that the development of artificial intelligence poses a potential risk to humans.
One way or another, the scientist emphasizes that he calls not to stop progress or to reverse it, but to realize its dangers that it conceals in order to keep them under control. “I am an optimist and I believe we can do it,” Hawking said.
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Dmitry Erusalimsky