He also warns that if humans want to avoid permanent extinction, we should be making plans to evacuate the earth.
Hawking claims that mankind will destroy the earth making it a fireball within the next 600 years. The renowned physicist believes soaring population sizes and consequential increasing demands for energy and food will lead to the catastrophe. Hawking also says that humanity should begin looking to the stars to avoid this fate, with our nearest neighbor Alpha Centauri the best candidate for our escape. Hawking also urged financial backers to put funds behind a project that would send probes to the star system.
The Alpha Centauri system is the closest star system to our sun and consists of three stars. Of those three stars, Proxima is the closest to our sun. At a mere 4.367 light years away, on our sky’s dome, we see this multiple star system as a single star – the third-brightest star visible from Earth. And it’s this system that Hawking has his eye on.
