Stephen Hawking: The end of the world is nigh

World renowned scientist Stephen Hawking has warned “the end of the world is nigh” and said we have got less than “600 years before a ball of fire” engulfs the Earth. According to the Cambridge News, Hawking warned that “overcrowding and energy consumption” could bring about an end to the planet within 600 years in a video appearance at the 2017 Tencent WE Summit in Beijing on November 5. The Cambridge scientist advised, mankind should take a cue from the American TV series Star Trek and “boldly go where no one has gone before” – to save itself. Professor Hawking sees an answer in the interstellar space travel programme Breakthrough Starshot – which is worth $100 million and was announced in 2016. Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg sit on the project’s board. Professor Hawking said: “The idea behind this innovation is to have the nanocraft ride on the light beam. “Such a system could reach Mars in less than an hour, or reach Pluto in days, pass Voyager in under a week and reach Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years.” Cambridge News further writes: “The Alpha Centauri star system, the closest star system to the Solar System, is 25 trillion miles [4.37 light years] away but with today’s fastest spacecraft, it would take about 30,000 years to get there.” “Breakthrough Starshot aims to establish whether a gram-scale nanocraft, on a sail pushed by a light beam, can fly over a thousand times faster to reach the three-star system where astronomers estimate that there is a reasonable chance of an Earth-like planet existing.”