Humans Need To Leave Earth Or We Will Die, Stephen Hawking Warns

Sam D

First Posted: Nov 17, 2016 03:10 AM EST

Stephen Hawking reportedly believes that humans will only survive for 1,000 more years on Earth before a mass extinction takes place. The renowned physicist put forth his viewpoint during a recent speech at the U.K.'s Oxford University Union.

According to The Huffington Post, Hawking said that humanity can avoid extinction and prolong its survival only if it were to colonize another planet.

"We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity," Stephen Hawking mentioned. "I don't think we will survive another 1000 without escaping beyond our fragile planet."

The 1 hour-long speech covered man's comprehension of the universe's origin from primordial creation myths to most cutting-edge predictions made by "M-theory," which suggests an idea regarding the universe's basic substance.

The 74-year-old had earlier this year predicted that technology will eventually lead to an inevitable cataclysm on our planet. Hawking feels that humanity faces a number of threats such as genetically engineered viruses, catastrophic global warming and nuclear war. The development of new technologies in the future will add on to the destruction, the physicist believes.

Mail Online revealed that as per Hawking, the answer to continue the existence of mankind in the future is to find another planet. However, the celebrated scientist also adds that humanity will not be able to colonize space for at least the next hundred years; therefore, mankind has to be careful during this period from accelerating the extinction process.

Incidentally, American space agency NASA has been working for quite some time to discover exoplanets that are Earth-like, habitable and can support life. So far more than 2,000 planets have been discovered, and NASA is studying around 4,500 "planet candidates" to see if they are actually planets.

Private organizations like SpaceX, apart from NASA, are also working on sending human missions to Mars in the near future, eventually aiming at colonizing the planet.