I read in The Telegraph that according to Stephen Hawking, lurk elsewhere in the cosmos, but that they probably are not very smart. Why has humanity not stumbled onto alien broadcasts, maybe something like "alien quiz shows?"
One option is that there likely is no life elsewhere. Or maybe there is intelligent life elsewhere, but when it gets smart enough to send signals into space, it also is smart enough to make destructive nuclear weapons.
He concludes: "Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare," but adds: "Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth." So should people worry about aliens? Alien abduction claims come from "weirdos" and are unlikely.
However, because alien life might not have DNA like earthlings, Prof Hawking warned: "Watch out if you would meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease with which you have no resistance."
Writing only a few weeks ago in the Telegraph, he said: "At the moment we have nowhere else to go, but in the long run the human race should not have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. I just hope we can avoid dropping the basket until then."
The scientist, who did pioneering work on black holes and on a theory of everything, compares people who do not want to spend money on human space exploration to those who opposed the journey of Christopher Columbus.
"In a way, the situation is like Europe before 1492. People might well have argued that it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase."
"Yet the discovery of the new world made profound difference to the old. Just think, we would not have a Big Mac or KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken)," he added referring to the ubiquitous US fast food outlets.
"Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect. It will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all," added the 66-year-old.
Hawking envisages a long-term space exploration project that would include building an experimental base on the moon within 30 years, and devising a new propulsion system to take us on a planetary hunt outside our solar system in 200-500 years.
"It will not solve any of our immediate problems on planet Earth," he said, "but it will give us a new perspective on them and... hopefully, it will unite us to face a common challenge."
"Going into space will not be cheap, but it will take only a small portion of world resources," he added.
