On 6th January 2012, during BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, on the eve of his 70th birthday, Professor Stephen Hawking was reported to have said, amongst other things:
- humans will establish self-sustaining colonies on Mars – but not for at least a century;
- after that, progress in science and technology will eventually enable humans to spread beyond the solar system and into the far reaches of the universe;
- it is essential for man to spread across the galaxy in case Earth is destroyed;
- it is almost certain that a disaster such as nuclear war or global warming would destroy the earth within 1,000 years;
- humanity’s extinction is possible but not inevitable;
- neutrinos can't travel faster than the speed of light, despite what CERN says;
- yes, it's possible that there are multiple universes (M-theory), with different values for the physical constants;
- finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be the biggest scientific discovery ever, but it would be very risky to attempt to communicate with an alien civilisation. If aliens decided to visit us, then the outcome might be similar to when Europeans arrived in the Americas. That did not turn out well for the Native Americans;
- I don't constantly think about these cosmic subjects, rather what preoccupies me is women, they are a complete mystery.
- my biggest mistake in science is that thinking information is destroyed in black holes. Rather, a black hole's information leaks back into our universe through an event horizon.
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