Once off the cliff, there is still hope if you keep running.
By running ever faster you may not fall.
Wyle E. Coyote
"If humanity survives the rise of artificial intelligence, the ravages of climate change and the threat of nuclear terrorism in the next century, it doesn't mean we're home free, according to Stephen Hawking.
Too many people, not enough food or jobs for everyone,
if trade diminishes
The renowned theoretical physicist has gone as far as providing humanity with a deadline for finding another planet to colonize: We have 1,000 years.
Who would get to go?
Remaining on Earth any longer, Hawking believes, places humanity at great risk of encountering another mass extinction.
...“I don’t think we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet,” he added.
What he's not saying is how many don't make it off the planet
Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low,
it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years
...the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race
further developing A.I. could prove a fatal mistake
Once humans develop artificial intelligence,
it will take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate
Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution,
couldn't compete and would be superseded
Stephen Hawking
...leaving the planet behind was our best hope for survival.
If Earth became uninhabitable,
and 'we' had a spaceship big enough for some people and enough supplies
that could go 250,000 miles per hour,
and it would take about 11,276 years without stopping or hitting anything
to get to the nearest star,
where the chances of there being a habitable planet may be at most
one tenth of one percent,
should we take better care of what we have?
The key, he noted, was surviving the precarious century ahead.
“Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years...
The opposite of a fact is falsehood,
but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr
...Before we have a chance to relocate, Hawking says, we'll first need to solve the potential threat created by technology.
...the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race..."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/11/17/stephen-hawking-just-gave-humanity-a-due-date-for-finding-another-planet/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_hawking-630a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
.
.
Earth’s view of the universe is a reflection of light from what distant objects looked like when light bounced off them in the past.
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star.
But we can understand the Universe.
That makes us something very special.
Stephen Hawking
If light from the middle of our the Milky Way takes 30,000 years to get to Earth, than a spaceship would have to travel at the speed of light for about 30,000 years to get to the center of the galaxy.
If Earth is spinning at about 1,043 mph at the equator
revolving around the sun at about 66,660 mph
moving around the Milky Way Galaxy at about 489,600 mph
headed towards Andromeda at about 180,000 mph
while the Local Group of galaxies is pulled toward the Local Super Cluster at about 540,000 mph
how fast are we surfing through the cosmos?
The speed of light is 5,880,000,000,000 or 5.88 trillion miles per year, meaning that light goes 186,282.4 miles per second, 11,176,944 miles per minute, and 670,616,640 miles per hour.
Were you to board a spaceship,
head out from earth at 99.999999 percent of light speed,
travel for six months and then head back home at the same speed,
your motion would slow your clock, relative to those that remain stationary on Earth,
so that you’d be one year older upon your return,
while everyone on Earth would have aged about 7,000 years.
Brian Greene
A bolt of lightning travels at about 270,000 miles per hour, or about .0004% as fast as the speed of light.
So far the fastest man made object has been a Voyager spacecraft, which has traveled at about 35,000 miles per hour or about 13% as fast as a bolt of lightning.
We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star
lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe
in which there are far more galaxies than people.
Carl Sagan
If a spaceship could travel 250,000 miles per hour without stopping or hitting anything, it would take at least 11,276 years to get to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, where there may be at least a 99.99% chance that there won’t be a habitable planet orbiting around it.
At 250,000 miles per hour, it would take 80,547,945 years to get to the center of the Milky Way.
Give your family a better chance to succeed
than your forefathers gave your parents
and your parents gave you.
If Gazelles need water and grass
and Cheetahs need water and Gazelles
and an abundance of sustenance leads to more Gazelles
should more Gazelles and water lead to more Cheetahs?
If too many Gazelles relative to water and grass lead to fewer Gazelles
do fewer Gazelles = fewer Cheetahs?
If Cheetahs and Gazelles were people
who would be who?
If need is sustenance and a temperate climate
should you not do what you don’t want done to you
unless you need to?
What do you do if you possess a brief case that may contain either $0 or $1,000,000
and are offered $200,000 for the case?
What if the majority of a civilization collectively chose the case and lost
but most don’t know?
On the famine inflicted by the Soviet Union on Ukraine, 1932-1933
There are probably already too many people on the planet.
We need to continue to decrease the growth rate
of the global population.
The planet can't support many more people.
Dr Nina Fedoroff
National Medal of Science Laureate
Professor of Molecular Biology
Science and Technology Advisor to the US Secretary of State since 2007
"Japan's sustainable society in the Edo period (1603-1867)"
What could happen if a generation
of underemployed, underpaid, educated and indebted young adults
became disillusioned by their elders’ financial mismanagement
and sought to identify and punish those responsible?
The Great Thanksgiving Hoax, by Richard J. Maybury
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.
Thomas Robert Malthus
Suggested populations could increase faster than food supplies
Thanksgiving
Is attachment suffering?
If most believed Earth was the center of the universe
before Copernicus theorized otherwise in 1514
and most people didn’t know the Milky Way was made of stars
before Galileo theorized in 1609
and most didn’t know about dinosaurs before 1855
while most were unaware of other galaxies before 1923
and we found the first planet outside our solar system in 1992,
do we probably not know much more than we think we know?
There is a theory which states
that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here,
it will instantly disappear and be replaced
by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001),
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
If life on Earth were one day...,
land based plants showed up around 10 P.M., or about 450 million years ago,
or at about 90.1% of Earths’ age,
asteroids big enough to cause large losses of life has hit about every 3 minutes,
or about once every 9.48 million years,
insects showed up around 10:30 PM, Dinosaurs - 11 PM,
'Humans' since somewhere between 200,000 to 2,500,000 years, about .04% of the age of the planet,
about 20 seconds before midnight
while ‘Modern’ humans go back about 10,000 years, or about 0.0001% of Earth’s age,
...and what started everything showed up,
would he/she/it be very happy with what we’ve done with the place?
When they discover the center of the universe,
a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.
Bernard Bailey
If about 50 million years after Earth formed about 4.55 billion years ago
an asteroid about the size of Mars crashed into Earth
leaving the moon, which is about a quarter the size of Earth,
led to different kinds of non 'air' breathing life about 3.9 billion years ago
until something started excreting oxygen, like our current vegetation,
which killed off whatever couldn’t adapt,
and about 99% of the thirty billion or so different kinds of everything that has ever lived on Earth
doesn't exist anymore and left no descendants,
what are the chances of modern humans lasting how long?
Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes…but things vary, and adopt a new form.
Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this,
yet the sums of things remains unchanged.
Ovid (43 BC - 17 AD), Metamorphoses
If most 'everything' is made of many atoms
which may have very possibly been around before this universe,
which may continue to exist after the current universe is gone,
when something living dies or when an inanimate object disintegrates,
do the atoms become part of everything else?
Every atom you possess
has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms
on its way to becoming you.
Bill Bryson
If all the atoms in a human body are completely replaced with other atoms about every 9 years
and a child gets about half its DNA from each parent,
a quarter from each grandparent, an eighth from each great-grandparent and so on,
and the genetic code of everything alive and has ever lived is essentially the same only different,
is everything on Earth relatively interconnected?
Is everything everything?
So when we say that 80% of the population can expect to be ancestors of all surviving individuals,
we are talking about their 22nd great-grandchildren…
[or] one four-millionth part.
Richard Dawkins
Professor of the Public Understanding, Oxford
If the genetic code of everything alive and has ever lived on Earth
is fundamentally the same but a little different,
did every living thing basically come from the same beginning?
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe
is that none of it has tried to contact us.
Bill Watterson
Calvin and Hobbes
If there is more unknown than known
like what started everything and why or if what started everything is still around,
and we don’t know for certain what happens before life or after death,
what is the purpose of cognitive existence?
Should we be able to think and do what we want
as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone else doing the same?
The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot
Don’t think you know what you don’t, conclude what you want because you want to,
say you can if you cant, obfuscate or say you’re going to do and don’t.
Don’t self fulfill prophesy.
The true measure of a man
is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Samuel Johnson
Do the right thing when no one’s looking,
leave others better off for having known you and the world a better place than you found it.
Forget what you give, value what you get,
return what you borrow, replace what you break and forgive quickly.
Hope everything happens the way it does
and leave unanswered questions.
Have as much fun as soon as possible
with the least risk for as long as you can.
