Hawking On Life In Space

Stephen Hawking, the famed theoretical physicist, recently gave a speech at George Washington University in connection with NASA's 50th anniversary in which he said primitive alien life may well exist somewhere fairly nearby in our galaxy. Citing the failure, so far, of SETI to detect alien signals, he said intelligent life is probably rare in the universe.

Hawking also argued for an aggressive human move into space, embracing the U. S. Moon/Mars program as a good beginning. He put the case in stark, simple terms. Long-term human survival, he said, demands that we move into space.

It's an argument some scientists have been making for decades. Up to and including the present, a cataclysm on Earth could lead to human extinction. If independent human communities were scattered on other worlds in the Solar System, and possibly in free space, a disaster on any one world could be overcome. Once communities are established in another star system, humanity will be essentially immortal.