Stephen Hawking died in March this year, but his new book Brief Answers to the Big Questions will reveal some of his final thoughts, including how humanity might survive climate change.
The planet is warming, storms are becoming more and more deadly and we are running out of time to stop climate change, which could be fatal. What can we do?
We have 12 years to save ourselves from collapse due to climate change, so why aren't we doing anything? Stephen Hawking it is predicted how the world would end a few weeks before his death. The physicist, who died in March of this year at the age of 76, after suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis all his life, in some of his last works also tackled climate change – and how humanity could defeat you. Excerpts to come books, which were published in the Sunday Times, show a rather bleak picture of the future of humanity.
What are the biggest threats to Earth according to Stephen Hawking?
Hawking thought they were climate change is our biggest problem. "A rise in ocean temperatures would melt the ice caps and cause the release of larger amounts of carbon dioxide," writes Hawking. "It could create both effects a climate similar to that of Venus, where it is 250 degrees Celsius.”
And how will humans survive?
Hawking believes it will in the next 1000 years a nuclear war or an environmental catastrophe "mutilated the Earth", but that by then "our resourceful race will find a way to survive the disaster".
I think some people will be by then with the help of genetic technology, such as CRISPR, have become "superhumans" with improved memory, fewer diseases and longer life spans and that these people will in all probability populate other planets. "There is no time to wait for Darwinian evolution to be more intelligent," adds Hawking.
What is CRISPR and should we be concerned?
CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a method of editing genes, where exposes the immune system to bacteria. This allows scientists to cheaply and quickly edit genes on plants, animals and humans, and so on they remove unwanted features and perhaps add those that are desirable.
But this is quite controversial. For example, what will Hawking predict will happen to those who will not be included in the superrace? Some scientists say that us the introduction of this type of technology should be of concern. "Editing human genes will lead to ever-increasing social inequality," says dr. David King, former molecular biologist and founder of the independent group Human Genetics Alert. Still others wonder if it will opened the door to the modern form of eugenics.
Anyway, it's about a rather dark prediction for our future. But let's try to look on the positive side: in a few weeks we will have wings and eyeballs that will shoot laser beams.
