Hawking Says Humans Must Colonize Other Planets to Survive

The Royal Society of London honored renowned physicist Stephen Hawking Thursday by presenting him with the prestigious Copley medal, the world’s oldest award for scientific achievement. First awarded in 1731, the Copley medal has been presented to the likes of Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein, and Sir James Cook.

"This is a very distinguished medal," Hawking said in a statement. "It was awarded to Darwin, Einstein and Crick. I am honored to be in their company." Hawking, 64, is a mathematics professor at the University of Cambridge whose work has led to the classification and greater understanding of black holes. His four books include two best sellers, A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell.

The Society’s president, Lord Rees, said when presenting the award, "Stephen Hawking has contributed as much as anyone since Einstein to our understanding of gravity. This medal is a fitting recognition of an astonishing research career spanning more than 40 years."

Before receiving the award, Hawking, whose speech and mobility have been limited to a speech synthesizer and wheelchair due to the progression of Lou Gehrig’s disease, gave an interview to the British Broadcasting Corporation. "The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet," he told the BBC. "Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe."

Hawking said that because there are no other planets like Earth in our own solar system, humans will be forced to travel to another star to find a hospitable planet to colonize. With today’s technology, however, the speed of chemical-propelled rockets such as the Apollo would make a trip to the next nearest star take about 50,000 years, Hawking said.

Hawking said that although the warp drives used in the TV series "Star Trek" are purely fiction, he believes that using matter/antimatter annihilation would allow spaceships to travel at almost the speed of light. When a particle and its antiparticle destroy each other, the entire mass is converted into energy. Hawking and other scientists believe that this process could be used to propel spacecraft.

"My next goal is to go into space," Hawking told the BBC. The Copley medal awarded to him on Thursday took him closer to space than most people on the planet. British astronaut Piers Sellers took Hawking’s medal into space with him on the July shuttle mission to the international space station, in order to recognize his achievements in cosmology. "Stephen Hawking is a definitive hero to all of us involved in exploring the Cosmos," Sellers said. "It was an honor for the crew of the STS-121 mission to fly his medal into space. We think that this is particularly appropriate as Stephen has dedicated his life to thinking about the larger universe."