We have about 1000 years left on our “lease”

Bryce Cullen
Staff Writer

            Last month Stephen Hawking made a bold statement, “We’ve got about 1,000 years to find a new place to live.” Although this was shocking, his points add up. Hawking explained in his speech given at the Oxford University Union that our best chance of survival is to leave the only home we have ever known. With our further development in artificial intelligence, our ongoing climate change, and increase in nuclear weapons, we are looking to put an end to our only home.
             However, this does not mean we are giving up just yet. In the mix of all of this, NASA is hard at work searching for “goldilocks” Exoplanets that could be suitable for our survival. Hawking also stated in his speech that “by that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race.” With that there is a little bit of good light to shine on the situation. Towards the end of Hawking’s speech at Oxford, he said, “Remember to look up at the starts and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, wonder about what makes the universe exist…Be curious. However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matter that you don’t give up.” With that said, who knows, maybe Stephen is wrong, and we stay on our home planet. Otherwise we will become the first known species to take its civilization to an interplanetary level. 

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