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Professor Stephen Hawking says he is planning to travel into space on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. The physicist and cosmologist, 75, said he had not expected to have the opportunity to experience space but that the Virgin boss had offered him a seat. Discussing the meaning of happiness on Good Morning Britain, he said: 'My three children have brought me great joy. 'And I can tell you what will make me happy, to travel in space. 'I thought no one would take me but Richard Branson has offered me a seat on Virgin Galactic, and I said yes immediately.'

Physicist Stephen Hawking, who some have suggested is a conspiracy in and of himself, is now claiming we need “some form of world government” to protect us from the escalation of technology and artificial intelligence. “Since civilisation began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages,” he told The Times. “It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war. We need to control this inherited instinct by our logic and reason.” … “The real risk with...

Professor Stephen Hawking says humans have less than 1,000 years on Earth before we are wiped out by extinction. The celebrated physicist said humans will only survive if another planet was found to live on. The 74-year-old said unless this happens then humans will be wiped out in a mass extinction.

Notes to Stephen Hawking's Personal Diary -- May 28, 2016 This Trump guy is utterly dangerous to the scientific community. Doesn't he understand that you can't teach the average working stiff anything about science and the way the world really works? I've spent decades writing books and lecturing to show that science can only be understood by professionals and academics who are paid a good salary to stare out into space and wonder about things that have zero relationship to life on Earth. And to protect that glorious profession -- keep it funded -- we've groomed our Ph. D's...

Stephen Hawking understands the workings of the universe — but says he cannot fathom the popularity of Donald Trump. The British astrophysicist told ITV’s morning show Monday that the presumptive Republican Party candidate for U.S. president “is a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator.“ Hawking also appealed to British voters to vote to keep the United Kingdom inside the European Union in a June 23 referendum. …

The immense popularity enjoyed by Pope Francis ever since his election in 2013 has precipitated sharply during the past year, and he no longer ranks among the top ten most admired men in the world, according to a massive new study involving 31,000 interviews.

Hawking at Harvard At packed Sanders Theatre, theoretical physicist and cosmologist tackles the contradictory qualities of black holes April 18, 2016 | Editor's Pick Popular Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer"If determinism — the predictability of the universe — breaks down in black holes, it could break down in other situations. Even worse, if determinism breaks down, we can’t be sure of our past history either. The history books and our memories could just be illusions. It is the past that tells us who we are. Without it, we lose our identity," said Stephen Hawking. By Peter Reuell, Harvard Staff Writer Twitter...

Stephen Hawking is backing a project to send tiny spacecraft to another star system within a generation. They would travel trillions of miles; far further than any previous craft. A $100m (£70m) research programme to develop the computer chip-sized "starships" was launched by the billionaire Yuri Milner, supported by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Interstellar travel has long been a dream for many, but significant technological hurdles remain. But Prof Hawking told BBC News that fantasy could be realised sooner than we might think. Media captionThe spacecraft would be propelled from earth by a giant laser, as Pallab Ghosh reports "If...

While Hawking fears that giving aliens our cosmic address could potentially bring death and ruin — much like what happened to many groups of Native Americans when Europeans invaded North America — Tarter thinks that aliens advanced enough to skip across star systems and reach Earth will be friendly, not aggressive.  

American space agency, the NASA had recently observed flares of X-rays from a black hole, which goes against the conventional notion that they are compact particles with such huge gravity that even light can't escape. Last month NASA announced that two of its space telescopes caught a huge burst of X-ray spewing out of a super massive black hole. These flairs appeared to be be triggered by the eruption of a charged particle from the black hole, which according to conventional belief doesn't let anything out. The latest findings are in accordance with the theory of Indian astrophysicist Abhas Mitra...

The Church of England has received unlikely backing from the biologist and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins after the UK’s three leading cinema chains refused to screen its advertisement featuring the Lord’s Prayer. The 60-second advert was due to be shown before Star Wars: the Force Awakens, released on December 18, which would have guaranteed it a huge cinema audience in the run-up to Christmas. But the Odeon Cineworld and Vue chains, which control 80 per cent of screens around the country, have refused to allow it because of a policy not to allow political or religious advertising...The decision prompted an...

The world famous physicist has admitted that if aliens came to visit Earth, the outcome might not be a positive oneStephen Hawking has tackled the mysteries of the universe his entire life. Now the world-renowned scientist has some new things to say about a potential alien invasion . "If aliens visit us, the outcome could be much like when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans," Professor Hawking told El País . "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach," he said.

22 Articles on Whether Or Not To Search for Extraterrestrial Life. Full Title:Commentaries: Stephen Hawking's Aliens. The Search for Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life. Project Breakthrough Listen Abstract Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner have launched a $100m search for intelligent alien life beyond solar system; a program focused on listening for radio signals coming from advanced civilizations far beyond the solar system, which, presumably, rely on similar technologies as those of the present civilizations of Earth. The search will be 50 times more sensitive, and cover 10 times more sky, than previous hunts for alien life. According to Stephen Hawking the effort...

A global robotic arms race "is virtually inevitable" unless a ban is imposed on autonomous weapons, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and 1,000 academics, researchers and public figures have warned. In an open letter presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aries, the Future of Life Institute signatories caution that "starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control". Although the letter, first reported by the Guardian, notes that "we believe that AI has great potential to benefit humanity in many...

A $100 Million Infusion for SETI Researchby Paul Gilster on July 20, 2015 SETI received a much needed boost this morning as Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner, along with physicist Stephen Hawking and a panel including Frank Drake, Ann Druyan, Martin Rees and Geoff Marcy announced a $100 million pair of initiatives to reinvigorate the search. The first of these, Breakthrough Listen, dramatically upgrades existing search methods, while Breakthrough Message will fund an international competition to create the kind of messages we might one day send to other stars, although the intention is also to provoke the necessary discussion and debate...

Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announces most comprehensive hunt for alien life.You could say that the silence has been deafening. Since its beginnings more than half a century ago, the dedicated search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has failed to detect the presence of alien civilizations. But at London’s Royal Society today (20 July), Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced a shot in the arm for SETI: a US$100-million decadal project to provide the most comprehensive hunt for alien communications so far. The initiative, called Breakthrough Listen, will see radio telescopes at Green Bank in West Virginia, the Parkes Observatory in Australia, and...

Is there anyone else out there in the universe? The endeavor to answer that eternal question got a serious shot in the arm this week thanks to Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner. At the Royal Society in London, the billionaire announced the launch of Breakthrough Listen, a 10-year, $100 million initiative to search for signs of extraterrestrial life. Related: The Power of Planning: NASA's Pluto Flyby Was Epic and Amazing Aided by the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in W. Va., the CSIRO Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia and the Lick Telescope in at the Lick Observatory in...

On Monday, famed physicist Stephen Hawking and Russian tycoon Yuri Milner held a news conference in London to announce their new project: injecting $100 million and a whole lot of brain power into the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life, an endeavor they're calling Breakthrough Listen. "We believe that life arose spontaneously on Earth," Hawking said at Monday's news conference, "So in an infinite universe, there must be other occurrences of life." Geoffrey Marcy, a University of California, Berkeley, astronomer who found most of our first exoplanets, also spoke at the event as part of the group's brain trust....

When Henri met Albert the stars didn’t quite align; nor did their clocks. Jimena Canales, historian of science, tells Joe Gelonesi about her discovery of an explosive 20th century debate that changed our view of time and destroyed a reputation.Physicists and philosophers have a curious relationship. They both need each other for the cosmic dance, but one partner sometimes refuses to join in. Star physicist Stephen Hawking even declared the end of philosophy in 2011. In some ways the pronouncement was to be expected; physics triumphalism dictates that at some point philosophy will exhaust itself and be unable to solve...

British physicist Stephen Hawking, the brilliant man who wrote "A Brief History of Time," says aliens probably exist and frets that if they discover Earth their intentions might be less like the film, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and more like the book, "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." In the book, alien bureaucrats determine the Earth should be demolished to make way for space highway and blow the Earth up. Sorry. Nothing personal. Prepare to die. It's not such a crazy thought, says Hawking, in a Discovery Channel series. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking...