Hawking says space is the place...to live

Renown physicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking has set the clock and the drawn the road map for humanity's survival. Log onto Google Milky Way Maps and hop in your Space Elevator, because space settlements are where your great-grandkids will be building their McMansions and shielding their double-wides from cosmic storms.

If we can avoid wiping ourselves off the face of the planet in the next century, Hawking says, then we count on the planet itself being uninhabitable. With an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth, the survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe, Hawking told a Hong Kong audience at a recent speaking engagement, according to a CNN report.

His fellow physicists expressed doubt that earthlings will have the technology to make it to Mars in the next 50 years, and his fellow inhabitants of the World Wide Web doubt humans will be anything more than astroparasites, sucking the planets dry, one by one.

But when we run out of universe, can't we just slide though a wormhole into the next one? Space, as they say, is infinite.

Blog community response:

"So Stephen Hawking says we should start colonizing the moon within the next century before mankind fubars Earth. Well, my bags are packed. I got dibs on this sw33t crater just a block down from Bob Zubrin's feldspar duplex. But here I have a fab 700 square foot apartment and a not infrequent hankering for KFC cheesy chicken bowls. Now I don't wanna go!"
--FrinkTank

"Why do you think he's telling you now? Because he knows that you need to pick up the pace! He's not saying it CAN be done within the timeframe of 100 years. He's saying that we need to start figuring how to get something done in a time frame as close to 100 years as possible."
--Boston Graffiti

"We are an incredibly stupid species despite the fact that our brains and opposing thumbs enable us to rule the world. We are ruining our planet--our only home--and we are doing nothing to stop it. There are those of us who try to recycle and live as 'green' as possible, but we have developed ourselves into a corner with everything based on using/doing things that kill our planet."
--Ruminations, etc.

"If the smartest person in the world says 'cut and run,' I think we should be listening."
--Ken on MySpace.com