Stephen Hawking Warns Earth's Days Are Numbered, Will Not Last More Than 1000 Years

Stephen Hawking is of the view that the earth will last for a few years more. During a talk at Oxford University Union in Britain on Tuesday, he said that the earth will survive for the next 1,000 years, and the only thing that could salvage us from extinction is by setting up colonies somewhere else in the solar system.

This is something NASA has been working on since 2009. Of late, the fate of humanity seems to be weighing heavily on the renowned physicist. He recently warned that artificial intelligence will either be the best or the worst to ever happen to humankind. Given the fact that humanity is prone to repeating its mistakes, Hawking doubts that robust autonomous weapons could have serious implications on humanity.

This isn't the first time that he has insisted humans to find out where to live next. He had previously listed catastrophic global warming, nuclear war, and genetically engineered viruses to pose a major threat to our survival.

According to Heather Saul, a columnist at The Independent, Hawking estimates that elf-sustaining human communities on Mars will never be a feasible idea for the next 1,000 years, indicating that we need to be extremely careful of the time ahead. Hawking has stated in his film, Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places, that he was convinced that humans were not alone but if the aliens happen to discover our planet, they will turn out to be more powerful and may not give any value to us.

In 2015, the 74-year-old professor added his name to a group of over 20,000 experts and researchers like Noam Chomsky, Steve Wozniak, and Elon Musk, calling for a tough ban on those building autonomous robots that can fire on targets with the intervention of humans. He concluded his speech by suggesting students to remain curious and asked them to look up at the stars and not down at their feet.