Will humanity find intelligent alien life anytime soon? Probably not, according to theoretical p
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2016-04-25 10:43:17
Will humanity find intelligent alien life anytimesoon? Probably not, according to theoreticalphysicist Stephen Hawking.
Hawking made the prediction last Tuesday duringthe Breakthrough Starshot announcement in NewYork City. At the news conference, Hawking, alongwith Russian billionaire investor Yuri Milner and agroup of scientists, detailed a new project that aimsto send a multitude of tiny, wafer-size spaceshipsinto space to the neighboring star system Alpha Centauri.
If these tiny spaceships travel at 20 percent the speed of light, they'll be able to reach AlphaCentauri in just 20 years, Milner said. Once there, the spacecraft will be able to do a 1-hourflyby of Alpha Centauri and collect data that's impossible to gather from Earth, such astaking close-up photos of the star system, probing space dust molecules and measuringmagnetic fields, said Avi Loeb, chairman of the Breakthrough Starshot Advisory Committee anda professor of science at Harvard University.
In addition to learning about space technology, the audience wanted to hear about aliens —specifically, when scientists might find them.
Hawking took questions from reporters in advance so that he would have time to prepare hisanswers.
Hawking said it's not likely that scientists will find intelligent alien life in the next 20 years. "Theprobability is low, probably," he said.
But the cosmologist did mention one caveat.
"The discoveries of the NASA Kepler mission suggest that there are billions of habitable planetsin our galaxy alone," Hawking said. "There are at least a hundred billion galaxies in the visibleuniverse, so it seems likely that there are others out there."
Hawking has famously predicted that intelligent aliens might threaten humankind. Indeed,when asked yesterday about what Earthlings should do if we come across intelligent alien life,he said, "We should hope that they don't find us."