Posted on 08/09/2010 8:53:02 AM PDT by Scythian
I'm sure he didn't have the closest star in mind. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf. In the next 30,000 or more years Ross 248 will be the closest star. It is also a red dwarf. Looks like we better get working on warp drive if Hawking's comments are to make any sense.
So rather than possibly debate you'd prefer to expound personal anecdotes ... okie dokie ;-)
Well, you might be able to "go" to a near planet, but you will never come back again; you will die of systems failure, starvation, dehydration, cabin fever (murder), complications of osteoporosis, disease, hypothermia, radiation sickness, or perhaps, OLD AGE.
And that's assuming Barney Fag, Stretchface, The Won, et. al. are able to finance the vehicle and launch.
DREAM ON . . . . . . .
. . ... . (and keep watching "2010")
I wonder if Mr. Hawking has any idea just what kind of parameters a planet would need to meet in order for human life to be able to survive. A habitable solar system is most likely extremely rare.
Debate?
.
Fantasies like grabbing pieces of asteroids to harvest metals to refine on Europa?
Hmmmm.....
If I leave and go to another planet
who is going to cut the grass
at my great grandfather’s graveyard?
Good question..
bump
I can envision a short story centered around that.
I wonder if Columbus or Magellan or Cortes or Pizarro had similar thoughts.
Kinda “deep” if you really think about it.
What happens to the world I leave behind...
That is a good question... Once we do settle new planets, there is going to be a mother of all brain drains.. Even greater when the best and brightest left Europe and came here..
Nobody would want the Nazis to have won WW-II. Nonetheless, if Hitler HAD won WW-II, the latest I can picture human feet having gotten (back) on Mars would be about 1990. There’s no excuse.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
What? It took you 246 messages to ping us? WTH, KD?!? ;’)
Where does Hawking suggest we go? How does he know it´s any better there?
And far away. I suppose if we could move ourselves throughout the universe, we would find it easy to move the earth along with us and adjust the properties of whatever star we select to orbit in a such a way that the new locale is just peachy.
No seriously, I think we are stuck here, and for a reason.
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