The death of Stephen Hawking has left a great void in the world of Science. The British astrophysicist died on Wednesday 14 March at his home in Cambrigde (United Kingdom) early in the morning and very soon after the reactions have begun, including those of the actors of the Big Bang Theory, who wanted to highlight his sense of humor and brilliance.
The immortal fame of Hawking, born in Oxford (United Kingdom) on January 8, 1942, will survive thanks to his extraordinary findings in theoretical physics, such as the radiation of black holes that bears his name.
His visions of the future were not very promising, for him it did not extend beyond a couple of years when at 21 he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) that was progressively incapacitating him, but which he managed to survive for more than half a century
With his time earned, the man who had no future took the opportunity to reflect on everyone’s. And these are his five versions of how that future could end if we do not do something to avoid it.
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ANIQUILATOR VIRUSES
The one about viruses was perhaps one of the first threats to humanity highlighted by Hawking. In an interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph in 2001, the scientist declared: “In the long term, I am more concerned about biology, nuclear weapons need large facilities, but genetic engineering can be done in a small laboratory. Danger is that, by accident or design, we create a virus that destroys us. ”
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NUCLEAR WAR AND CLIMATE CHANGE
There is still an estimated arsenal of some 16,300 nuclear weapons in the world. They are data from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) updated to December 2014. From this combined arsenal, “around 1,800 American and Russian warheads are on high alert, ready for immediate use,” says the FAS. In other words: there is still a nuclear capacity for the world to stop existing tomorrow.
In January 2007, Stephen Hawking and other scientists announced that the Clock of the Apocalypse was set five minutes before midnight, approaching two more minutes at 12. Since 1947, the board of directors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists of the University of Chicago , of which Hawking is a member, keeps this symbol that represents how close we are to the end of civilization because of a nuclear war.
On the occasion of the announcement, Hawking declared: “As citizens of the world, we have the duty to alert the public about the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and about the dangers
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ALIENIANS INVASION
Scientists have been searching for the sky for purposes of revealing the presence of extraterrestrial civilizations, hitherto unsuccessful. These investigations assume the premise that, if one day find a trail of intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, they would like to communicate with us as equals.
However, Hawking does not share this vision, leaning towards the thesis of the annihilating invasion that we have seen so many times in the cinema.
In a documentary recorded for the Discovery channel in 2010, the physicist said that all contact with extraterrestrial civilizations should be avoided. Hawking believes “perfectly rational” that there is more intelligent life in the universe, but fears that these beings have exhausted the resources on their planet and have become space nomads in search of new deposits.
“If the aliens visited us, the result would be similar to when Columbus arrived in America, which was not very good for Native Americans.”
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THE REVOLUTION OF THE ROBOTS
“Success in the creation of artificial intelligence would be the greatest event in the history of humanity, unfortunately, it could also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks,” Hawking and three other scientists wrote in May. 2014 in an article for the British newspaper The Independent.
The physicist has warned about the possibility that intelligent machines design their own improvements and surpass humans, “managing financial markets, inventing
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THE BUTTON THAT THE UNIVERSE EATS
The launch in 2008 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, raised some fears that the machine created aberrant and destructive physical phenomena; fears without scientific basis, but very popular on the internet.
What to say now, when it is the most important of living astrophysicists who states that the Higgs boson could really eat the entire universe
Let’s be calm: it’s just a theoretical speculation far removed from reality. In his prologue to the book Starmus, 50 years of man in space, presented last September on the occasion of the international astronomy festival Starmus in Tenerife, Hawking suggests that at extreme levels of energy the so-called God particle could become unstable. “This could mean that the universe suffered a catastrophic disintegration into the void, with a vacuum bubble expanding at the speed of light.” “It could happen at any time and we would not see it coming,” he adds.
But according to Hawking, it would take more than 100,000 million gigaelectronvolts (GeV). The maximum energy that can reach the LHC is 14 teraelectronvolts (TeV), which is equivalent to 14,000 GeV. That is, it would require the energy of more than seven million LHC. The physicist clarifies that such a particle accelerator would be greater than the Earth, and that such an installation ”
