Stephen Hawking Says The World Will End

Constantine shored up the Christian religion as a mean to control the population. Quite the visionary, seeing how 2000 years later there's still untold millions of suckers.

This is true, however before the masses got sucked in, Christianity was in a pure state, and there are still some who follow the original in its entirety. The Catholic religion is full of man-made traditions and hypocrisy.
 
So, Christianity and Steven Hawking say the world is going to end and we still have this debate?
 
If you are a scientific thinker, religion seems silly. Blind faith is for the weak-minded.

Quoted for hypocrisy.
Science takes as much faith as whatever religion you want to talk about today.
Theories, theories, theories..... Just like miracles, miracles, miracles....

Don't be a dick, just because you don't agree with others. That is not helping discussion.
 
Stephen Hawkings is kind of like Sheldon on Big Bang Theory. He is quite smart is some respects; not so much in other respects. Many years ago Dr. Frank Brown from Northwestern University wanted to shoot potatoes into outer space. Potatoes have metabolic rates which slow in the early morning hours and increase during the day. If you move a potato from the east coast to the west coast the timing of those rates will initially mirror east coast rates until it slowly adapts to west coast timings.

The point is that potatoes like human beings have metabolic functions that are linked to our life on this planet and it may in fact be impossible for human beings to live anywhere other than close proximity to the earth. If you shoot a potato (or a human being) it may whither and die as it moves farther and farther from the earth, moon and sun.

Apparently Stephen Hawkins hasn't thought that far ahead...
 
for a guy who's entire "career" is theortical, he'd have spent time better working on his condition. Contributed ... nothing...

dont ever use an MRI or other advanced medical imaging device EVER again
 
Stephen Hawkings is kind of like Sheldon on Big Bang Theory. He is quite smart is some respects; not so much in other respects. Many years ago Dr. Frank Brown from Northwestern University wanted to shoot potatoes into outer space. Potatoes have metabolic rates which slow in the early morning hours and increase during the day. If you move a potato from the east coast to the west coast the timing of those rates will initially mirror east coast rates until it slowly adapts to west coast timings.

The point is that potatoes like human beings have metabolic functions that are linked to our life on this planet and it may in fact be impossible for human beings to live anywhere other than close proximity to the earth. If you shoot a potato (or a human being) it may whither and die as it moves farther and farther from the earth, moon and sun.

Apparently Stephen Hawkins hasn't thought that far ahead...

That's pretty good satire.
 
Stephen Hawkings is kind of like Sheldon on Big Bang Theory. He is quite smart is some respects; not so much in other respects. Many years ago Dr. Frank Brown from Northwestern University wanted to shoot potatoes into outer space. Potatoes have metabolic rates which slow in the early morning hours and increase during the day. If you move a potato from the east coast to the west coast the timing of those rates will initially mirror east coast rates until it slowly adapts to west coast timings.

The point is that potatoes like human beings have metabolic functions that are linked to our life on this planet and it may in fact be impossible for human beings to live anywhere other than close proximity to the earth. If you shoot a potato (or a human being) it may whither and die as it moves farther and farther from the earth, moon and sun.

Apparently Stephen Hawkins hasn't thought that far ahead...

are you insane? because please take some basic biology
 
The world ended for Stephen Hawking when they introduced physics with Angry Birds and he is still stuck playing Words with Friends.
 
If you want a truely Christian standpoint on the end of the world the Bible says:

The Earth will not be left to totter for time indefinite. (Meaning it won't be left to be horrible forever)

Bible shows that the world was never intended to be anything but perfect, and that it'll return to its former state when the time is right.
 
OH and you know that computer your all sitting in front of it works thanks to people that study things like Quantum Mechanics go read up on Quantum Tunneling its what makes semi-conductors work

WTF IS WRONG WITH THIS PLACE THIS IS LIKE THE THIRD TREAD FULL OF LUDDITES
 
I know you won't understand this because all you see on the TV media is American Idol, Reality TV, The Simpsons, and News media on crime, politics, other blown-out-of-proportion BS - but our scientists and engineers are advancing more than ever. You just don't hear about it.

I find Stephen Hawkings quote rather... dissapointing - and unfortunate. The amount accomplished by our race in 50 years is huge - and it grows exponentially in the next 50 years.

Predictions for the next 500 years:
-Ample ways to travel outside of earth.
-Much more knowledge of the universe.
-Much more knowledge on the human brain.
-Much more knowledge of what is currently considered "limited resources" - which is rather comical considering the lack of knowledge and exploration we have on this entire huge planet. It could simply be better use of resources, or duplication of resources - either way we will find a solution in due time.

Do you have ANY idea how difficult interstellar space travel is? It will never be anywhere close to as easy as it looks in Star Trek, let alone Star Wars*. Hell, it won't even be as easy as it looks in Alien, and that looked hella difficult. One of my biggest frustrations with Hawking is his insistence that we need to go to space (implying interstellar travel to other habitable planets) to survive. What he should be saying is "We will probably never be able to go to space to survive so quit farking up the earth you idiots".

I can't argue your other points, we will either have much more knowledge of those things or descend into barbarism, one or the other is basically guaranteed. Just keep in mind "much more knowledge" is a very nonspecific thing and we likely won't be teleporting around or anything like that, not even after 1000 years of continual progress.


*Issues with space travel:
1.) Weight. Barring the development of effectively unlimited energy in a small and light package (which isn't likely to ever happen) carry weight will always be at a premium in space. If you double your weight you need twice as much fuel to move your vehicle, but that also means you just doubled your fuel, which means you need extra fuel to move the extra fuel. So depending on the efficiency of the fuel source, every doubling of weight calls for anywhere from 3 to 10 times as much fuel. You quickly reach a point where it is unworkable, and you simply can not make a larger ship, and that point is likely to result in a ship that will carry a dozen people at most unless a fuel source is found that, by todays standards, works by complete magic.
2.) Time: Without some form of "warp" drive, which requires the afformentioned unlimited power source to even consider, interstellar space travel will take many years. Many years of living in a cubicle sized space. This means that cryo for all travelers is a 100% must, but it may never be workable.
3.) Equipment: The amount of equipment needed to effectively settle a new planet would be impossible to move because of the afformentioned weight issues. Just the equipment needed to make the trip itself workable will probably use up way too much weight, let alone the "startup" equipment for when you get there. Probably the only hope for this would be to send a few unmanned ships ahead of you, but that would cost weigh too much to be realistic and feasible.
4.) Space: Space is huge. There is way too much space in space. Lets say you arrive at another solar system and wake up from your cryosleep. Because of the equipment issues you have only a very small telescope that you have to deploy outside the ship on a small articulating arm, or which is built into the ship, meaning you have to turn the ship to turn the telescope. It could take this telescope as much as a year to scan enough of the system to be reasonably sure there are no major objects in your projected path to the one possible habitable planet. Knowing the route is clear is vital because.....
5.) AAA: There is none. If something vital breaks down in space you are farked. And worse, you can't carry a bunch of backups because weight and equipment is at a premium. So any non-minor problem and everyone dies cold and alone.
6.) Radiation: There is a ton of it and because you will be in space so long you will have to burn a lot of weight on shields to protect you from it (and from excessive heat, and excessive cooling)
7.) Magic: It doesn't exist, and it is what you would need to make the unlimited, small, powerful, low-heat generating, energy source you will need to travel any way other than as described above.

Does this mean interstellar space travel is impossible? No, it does not. But it does mean that it is VERY long odds that we will ever travel outside our solar system, and much much much longer odds we will ever colonize another planet. So the smart thing to do is not fark up our planet.

However, there is good news. Our planet is really really really hard to completely ruin. Worst case scenario if we REALLY fark things up is that we humans die off but life on this planet carries on without too much further difficulty. More likely scenario, if we don't get our act together first, at some point in the next 1000 years we are reduced to tribal levels with limited locations in which human survival is still possible. Then over the course of thousands of years the planet becomes fully habitable again and we start over.

(This is all just my opinion of course, but it is based on a little study, and a lot of being a realist).
 
This is foolish. I am not particularly religious but even I can recognize that something like 3/4 of the world's population, (very rough guess), are religious and therefor religion makes perfect sense to them.

The religious simply see something in it that the non-religious do not.

Even in the longest stretch of understanding, if believe in something false fosters something positive, then falsehood beliefs are not by definition a bad thing.

Of course those beliefs are all idealistic. Man is not perfect so when the imperfect try to emulate the perfect, you wind up with perfectly imperfect results :D

I'm pretty sure almost all religious beliefs also foster negative things, so your desire for religion to be net positive isn't assured. I could talk about all the subtle things like dividing neighborhoods, rejecting sound scientific theories etc, but lets just start with the big obvious one, war started because of religious divisions.
 
Since when was captain obvious a cripple.

We won't be traveling anywhere outside of our planetary system any time soon. We'd need thousands of years of advancing technology ......I really don't foresee a thousand years of advancement without a dark age or collapse of society of some sort.

Vsauce covers this pretty good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD08CuUi_Ek
 
I know that a lot of you are talking about how the technology to travel in space will never be fast enough to really get anywhere, keep in mind that there are working models of spacecraft that can technically move faster than the speed of light by warping space around it, and NASA is working on a prototype propulsion system that should make travel to Mars in 30 days a possibility as we speak.

I don't know if either of them will be efficient enough to actually go further than Mars with any kind of practicality, but just imagine what the breakthrough after that might bring.
 
Trolololo...

If not, look up some of his work on gravitational singularities, black holes, etc.

Correction... look up some of his ideas on gravitational singularities, black holes, etc...

He's a theoretical physicist... and his ideas all are in the range of either unobservable (black holes) or unbelievable (brane theory). He's basically a mathematician and applying it to ideas he has to see if mathematically it's possible. Well I should say he was... I (and many others) question the validity of any of his work as of late. I don't have an encyclopedia of the man's work, but I'm not sure any of his theories have been ever confirmed experimentally, or observationally.
 
lol. Definitions, definitions, definitions .... ?

dismissive, dismissive, dismissive.
blah blah blah, continue disregarding whatever doesn't jive with what you perceive as reality. it's obvious we have many different opinions about the origin of humans here, don't be so dense.
 
I know that a lot of you are talking about how the technology to travel in space will never be fast enough to really get anywhere, keep in mind that there are working models of spacecraft that can technically move faster than the speed of light by warping space around it, and NASA is working on a prototype propulsion system that should make travel to Mars in 30 days a possibility as we speak.

I don't know if either of them will be efficient enough to actually go further than Mars with any kind of practicality, but just imagine what the breakthrough after that might bring.

Define working model? As far as I know they have nothing that comes even close to the speed of light.

The maximum distance from Earth to Mars is 401,355,980 km
The minimum distance is 54,510,620 km

Dividing by the speed of light in free space at 2.997 x 10^5 km/s gives...

Max time = 22.29 mins
Min time = 3.03 mins

Gliese 581 c is likely the closest habitable planets and is located 20.3 light-years away. Travelling at the speed of light we would be there by 2033 ish.

The Helios probe is the fastest object created by human. It travels at 157,078 mph (43.63 miles per second), which is 1/4269 of the speed of light.

Travelling at the speed of the Helios probe it would take 86,726 years to reach Gliese 581 c.

Distance to mars - 54,510,620 km
Distance to Gliese 581 c - 13,000,000,000,000 km ish.


Traveling to mars <> deep space travel.........thousands of years of technological advances will be needed....which is unlikely to happen.

We will likely live and die with the earth.
 
war started because of religious divisions.

War started the moment the first human killed another human. All war is is one individual or group trying to impose their will on another through force. Religion goes back a lot further then Christianity or any recorded war so it's tough to pin it down to a specific source.


(Weight and space travel), 3D printing, we will build the things we need when we get there. In fact, we will use small 3D printers to make the bigger 3D printers that will make the really useful stuff. The blue prints are really small when they are just data. The materials for the printing, sand would be a good start, there is usually sand most anywhere we would want to go, I like the beach.

And ....
I'm pretty sure almost all religious beliefs also foster negative things, so your desire for religion to be net positive isn't assured.

Get off it right there. I said I wasn't religious, this is NOT MY DESIRE. I never said there were no negatives but I did infer that because humans are involved good intentions and all, things don't always go so well, ie ... humans often do bad things even when they claim it's for good reasons. Try and engage your brain while your looking for a reason to nit-pick.

I'll tell you right now why stuff everywhere is messed up. Cause we are human. Here in the US we are challenged because families are messed up, this is a huge one for us. Other places have their issues too. In the end, it's just because people are people.

We're human, you can hope for something better but I think all you're ever going to get is what we are. We can be better, greed is a pretty big inhibitor. Intolerance is another problem. Indifference.

But I am also a realist and I don't live in a fantasy world and I do believe in doing unto others before they can do unto you. Because I know the other guys are human too.

It's just good business.
 
IMO... our awesome hadron collider will create a black hole and destroy us before the 1000 years is up. Gogo curiosity!
 
Sorry, we need to cut science funding and space exploration. We need more useless wars and social spending.

Couldn't you also argue that saving the race by going into space is "social" spending :D

Despite the fact that we have pressurized air tight spacecraft, did you know we actually don't know how to survive in space yet. Outside our planet's electromagnetic field, there is solar radiation, outside our solar system there is cosmic radiation, and all of it has been theorized as being very lethal to humans and we are completely unsure how to block it.
 
dismissive, dismissive, dismissive.
blah blah blah, continue disregarding whatever doesn't jive with what you perceive as reality. it's obvious we have many different opinions about the origin of humans here, don't be so dense.

You equated theory to miracle, yes?
 
if only we had voted Gingrich into office... oh well, better luck next time
 
I have the utmost respect for Mr. Hawking, however, he is becoming a curmudgeon in his advanced years. Reminds me of Nietzsche with all the negativity.

We are gonna kill ourselves.

Aliens will conquer us.

Yeah, OK... or how about since no one can predict the future we try to be a little more positive and suggest that with current technological advances it seems that we could in fact utilize Earth's resources more intelligently.

I mean cmon, what's his message then? If we trash one planet, just go trash another? Roaming rednecks of the galaxy? Creating an interstellar trailer park wherever we go?

How about we learn to sustain ourselves on one planet with limited resources before we go colonize another?
 
I have the utmost respect for Mr. Hawking, however, he is becoming a curmudgeon in his advanced years. Reminds me of Nietzsche with all the negativity.

We are gonna kill ourselves.

Aliens will conquer us.

Yeah, OK... or how about since no one can predict the future we try to be a little more positive and suggest that with current technological advances it seems that we could in fact utilize Earth's resources more intelligently.

I mean cmon, what's his message then? If we trash one planet, just go trash another? Roaming rednecks of the galaxy? Creating an interstellar trailer park wherever we go?

How about we learn to sustain ourselves on one planet with limited resources before we go colonize another?

that's fuzzy logic.
 
Theory is backed by evidence, observation, and so on. It doesn't rely on what one chooses to see or interpret on a whim.

No, because once it is reproducible, its no longer a theory.
Till anything is reproducible, it remains nothing but a hypothesis. How do you go about proving a theory? Reproduce you hypothesis.
 
Sam Harris said it best.

“If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence.

If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?”
 
How about we learn to sustain ourselves on one planet with limited resources before we go colonize another?

I agree that optimism is healthier (that's why I like Kurzweil) but I think we should start to colonize another planet as soon as possible and it should try to be a global collaboration.
 
I agree that optimism is healthier (that's why I like Kurzweil) but I think we should start to colonize another planet as soon as possible and it should try to be a global collaboration.

I am not riding the spacebus sitting next to an Irish person.
 
This is not true. Relativity is a theory; is it no longer because we've observed gravitational lensing?

there is far more to Relativity then that and all of has to work
and so far all of what has been tested holds up but a lot has yet to be tested
 
This is not true. Relativity is a theory; is it no longer because we've observed gravitational lensing?

No, it's because the entire theory hasn't been completely proven 100%.
Come on, man, I know you understand what I'm saying.
 
No, it's because the entire theory hasn't been completely proven 100%.
Come on, man, I know you understand what I'm saying.

You originally equated theory (testable) to miracle (untestable, hysterical), so I don't understand what you're saying.
 
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