Stephen Hawking: Abandon the Earth

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has some advice for the people of Earth – it’s time to get off.

“I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space,” Hawking said to Big Think , a global forum that includes interviews with experts.

“It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn’t have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let’s hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load.”

The physicist called humankind’s survival “a question of touch and go” and referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963 as one time people narrowly avoided extinction. He also referred to the 22,600 stockpiled nuclear weapons, including 7,770 still operational, scattered around the planet.

If that doesn’t drive us off, University of Sussex astrophysicist Dr. Robert Smith said global warming may reach a point “where all of Earth’s water will simply evaporate.” He said life will disappear on Earth long before the 7.6 billion years some say the aging sun will expand and destroy Earth.