Did you know that Stephen Hawking said all of these?
You’ve probably already heard about Stephen Hawking and all of the Stephen Hawking predictions, right? He died on March 14, 2018, but what he left behind is extremely important to the scientific world.
Hawking shook the world of physics in the 1970s when he revealed that black holes are not what we imagine them to be. After all, they are not so dark, and there is some light that can escape them. This was believed to be impossible, but here we are today.
But this is not the only time Stephen Hawking has presented something that has shocked the world. He has more incredible pronouncements about the way our world works and also about the cosmos and its nature.
Now, keep reading Science in the World and find out the most unbelievable predictions made by Stephen Hawking. How many of them are true?
1. The Higgs Boson
We know that the eternal love of Hawking will always be black holes, but keep in mind that they were not the only things that fascinated him. His scientific gambles go far beyond that, and there are a lot of Stephen Hawking predictions regarding other subjects in our world.
The Higgs boson, the long-sought-after missing component of the standard model of particle physics, was finally found in 2012 by researchers at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, making history in this way. A really important discovery indeed. It changed the way we view the world.
The Higgs boson was first theorized in the 1960s. This particle is known to be the one that is able to interact with other subatomic particles and give them mass. But for many years, the Higgs boson remained a mystery. In fact, Hawking and Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan had a well-known disagreement on whether the particle would ever be found.
Somewhere in the 2000s, Hawking and Kane were at a conference in Korea when Hawking said that he believed that no Higgs boson would ever be found. In response to this, Kane proposed a $100 bet. They both agreed, and the bet was on.
Later, when the big news about the discovery of the Higgs Boson was flooding the entire media, Hawking praised Higgs and also announced that he had lost the bet. So, from Stephen Hawking predictions, was this right? As you can see, not at all. But let’s see what other predictions are out there.
2. Aliens?
There are some Stephen Hawking predictions that we will be discussing, but considering that this man spent all of his life studying space, it was obviously expected that he would have something to say about the existence of aliens, right?
Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner launched a project in 2015 with the goal of using powerful computers to listen to aliens. SETI@home, a scientific experiment headquartered at the University of California, Berkeley, is supported by the project known as Breakthrough Initiatives. In order to find life, it utilizes computers to search the skies.
In his last years, Stephen Hawking said that if humankind ever meets an alien civilization, it might be a hostile one. He made the claim that advanced alien civilizations that come to Earth may be hostile in his 2010 documentary series, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.
He believed that these aliens will probably be searching for new places that they can colonize, and because of this, we will never be sure about their limits. In another documentary released in 2016, Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places, he compared our encounter with the aliens to the encounter of the Native Americans with Columbus.
Other researchers don’t share the same views as him, and they dismiss many of Stephen Hawking predictions. They believe that interstellar space travel is something extremely difficult to achieve, and we must also consider that humans have already transmitted radio into space, which has for sure sent a beacon to any other species that is living there.
3. But what about Artificial Intelligence?
Hawking cautioned about the risks as well as the huge prospects that came with the development of artificial intelligence. There were more instances where he stated that the evolution of AI might mean the end of the human race.
In an interview for the BBC, Hawking said that we humans are slowed down by the biological evolution that is a part of us. On the other hand, machines can evolve as fast as they want by reinventing themselves, and we have no chance of keeping up with them. This sounds kind of dangerous, doesn’t it?
And Steven Hawking is not the only one who believes that Artificial intelligence is a threat to humanity. More recently, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, has stated publicly that AI is an existential threat. Musk’s opinion has never been challenged by anyone because a lot of researchers see it as a “scare tactic.”
Despite all of Stephen Hawking predictions, he also spoke in many ways about the advantages of artificial Intelligence. He said that the potential of this technology is immense, and it can definitely transform every aspect of the life we know today. Also, he warned us about how we would benefit from all of this. He concluded that the evolution of technology seems to lead to inequality.
4. Is Earth becoming a giant fireball?
According to Hawking, overpopulation and energy consumption will turn Earth into a massive ball of fire by the year 2600, making it uninhabitable. So, humans will have to find another planet to live on, but he believed that we would be able to find this new home 100 years before extinction.
Hawking was a participant in the Breakthrough Starshot project, which aims to create light-powered spacecraft that travel at the speed of light and can search for potentially habitable planets that may be orbiting around the star Alpha Centauri.
Again, the Stephen Hawking predictions have something in common with Elon Musk. The CEO of Tesla also said that he believes that there will be an extinction event, and because of this, humans should strive to colonize Mars since the Earth will become inhabitable.
The Cambridge scientist believed that one of the greatest hazards to humans and the Earth was global warming. Hawking was especially concerned about the possibility of a “tipping point,” at which time global warming might become irreversible. He also spoke out against the US’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement.
What do you think about these Stephen Hawking predictions? Do you agree with them? As with any other scientist, it was expected that we would hear some controversial opinions from him. Maybe some of them are true. After all, who knows?
If you are curious and want to learn more about the nature of the universe, you can read one of the most popular publications on this topic and one of the best-selling books by Stephen Hawking: The Illustrated Brief History of Time
As you can see, space is so big and mysterious. We know so little about it, and because of this, it can be quite unsettling for us to think about space. We all learned some things here and there about astronomy in school, but how much do we really know?
Stay with us here on Science in the World and read the following article if you want to know more about space: 6 Amazing Astronomy Facts You Haven’t Learned in School
