Stephen Hawking died in 2018 and was rightfully celebrated as one of history’s
greatest scientists. He constructed theories on quantum mechanics, black holes and gravitational physics. He collaborated with his daughter to write youth-oriented books to make his physics more accessible to more people. As early as 2002 he was voted as one of the top 100 Britons in history.
In his last years, however, he joined another group of luminaries: those who boldly went beyond the limits of their expertise, soared, and soon flopped back to Earth. As Michael Jordan in baseball, Sonny Bono in politics, and Newt Gingrych, another space traveler. Running for president in 2012, the former Speaker of the House promised that, if elected, he would establish a colony (presumably of humans) on the moon before he left office, which would become the 51st state. He apparently did not consult NASA, as his idea was so far removed from even the most remote of scientific possibilities he became the laughing stock of the year.
Hawking first stated that man’s days on Earth were numbered and we had to find another place to live in 2016. At that time, he said that man had 1000 years before extinction. In 2017 he revised it down to 100 years, and in November of that year the time before doomsday went up to 600 years.
He gave several reasons for the necessity of leaving Earth . First, “we re running out of space and the only place to go are other worlds.” Hmm, think about it. Then compare it to Yogi Berra: “Nobody goes to that place anymore. It’s too crowded.” Apparently lacking space, everyone would perish. Actually, we have a pretty good idea what humans do when they run out of space and/or resources. The super-isolated Easter Island is a typical example. Their population had grown to perhaps 18,000 and then they started to squander their resources, mainly the pine forests. When the first Europeans found the island in 1722, there were only 3000 left. And if we run out of resources and space, so too would Earth’s population be reduced to a number which could be supported by the reduced resources. But why leave?
Another reason man will not last on Earth, Hawking continues, is because of an impending environmental armagedon. “We are close to a tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible. Trumps’s action [withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement] could push the Earth over the brink to become like Venus he said, with a temperature of 250 degrees and raining sulfuric acid.” Wow. Who said Al Gore was an alarmist? The average surface temperature of the Earth has been within a range of 8 degrees for the last 2 million years. 12 degrees if you go back to 75 million years. The reason Venus is so hot is because it is 40 million kilometers closer to the sun. So an increase in surface temperature on Earth by 200 degrees in the next 600 years seems a bit of a reach.
There is no exact agreement on the worst case scenario for global warming among more credible scientists and organizations. But the National Climate Assessment, the one Trump doesn’t believe, sees temperatures increasing by 1.5 to 2 degrees “above pre-industrial levels”, and 1.5 meter rise in the sea level. “Multiple systems failure” would exacerbate climate effects, such as the power failures cutting off cooling systems. Elsewhere one scientist has said that if the Antarctic ice melted, the sea level could rise 5 meters. This would doom coastal cities and much of Florida, and certainly cause huge economic displacements. but we could all still fit on higher land.
It would be nice to believe man could and will solve the overpopulation problem and the global warming problem in a civilized global mobilization of resouces and co-operation. But they probably won’t. Disasters are very likely. The multiple systems failures could break down the world economic system. But even if wars, mass starvation, reduced the population from 8 billion to 1 billion, (the Earth’s population around the year 1800) , the idea that we could find planets which would provide a more hospitable habitat than earth, or even Mars, is a bit absurd. If coastal cities submerged below sea level, Denver would still be a mile above it, and most of earths surface would be remain dry. If the temperature rose 5 degrees, the Earth would still support human life. If there was a breakdown of the world economic system and starvation ensued, there would be nothing better in space.
“Man’s technology will get us to Proxima B” , the closest known exo-planet to be a candidate for our new home, said Hawkings. But at the speed of the space ships we send to Mars, 17,000 miles per hour, it would take 150 thousand years to get there. And in the unlikely event it had water, the right air pressure and temperature, breathable atmosphere and arable soil, it would have none of the affects of man’s 100,000 years of cultural evolution on Earth – pro baseball, elephants, vocational centers for the blind, root beer, symphony orchestras, the Greek Parthenon, Thai restaurants, square dancing, go carts, giant redwoods or history.
Besides climate science, Hawking seems to have had a modest aptitude in the science of public relations. It is fine to declare you are an atheist. No one will deny your rights, and many will agree with you. But Hawkings chastised the several billion people on Earth who are not atheists, calling religion “a fairy story” for people who were “afraid of the dark.” If Hawking turns out to be wrong about this, it wouldn’t be the first time. In 2016 he bet felllow scientist Gordon Kane that the search for the Higgs boson -a particle crucial to a theory of mass- would be in vain. It could not be discovered. But it was discovered, and Hawkings paid his 100 pounds and his respects. It is interesting that he was unconcerned about the end of his personal existence but rather compulsive about the extension of the life of our species.
I love zoos, but I have, on occasion, seen an animal in a zoo which I thought would be better off dead. In one zoo, a Bengal tiger pacing and pacing around his small, barren cage. A giraffe in a Brooklyn zoo, the ceiling a few feet over his head, listlessly licking the paint off the wall.
If our species in, say 1000 years, did have to decide to either leave or slowly become extinct, it would be a tough call. But if I were to be making the decision, I know what it would be for me. I would choose to call it a good run. Thanks for the memories, Earth. All things must pass. All people, all species, and even all stars have a life span. Rather this than be removed from all vestiges of our nature, as the more unfortunate animals in the zoo.
I will never become one of the top 100 citizens of any country. But Stephan Hawking’s last testament, I believe, was quite uninspiring.
