Future of humanity uncertain from "summary" of Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
The future of humanity is uncertain. We have made remarkable progress in science and technology, but there are also grave dangers. Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. Our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space. 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. That is why I am in favor of manned, or should I say, personned space flight. The recent discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe, driven by what is now called dark energy, has brought the future of the universe back into the center of theoretical physics. The cosmological constant, Lambda, which had been introduced by Einstein to explain why the universe is not ...
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