Stephen Hawking: Human aggression will kill the human race but space travel will save it

Speaking at London’s Science Museum, professor Stephen Hawking warned that a major nuclear war would ‘be the end of civilization’.

18:15 20 February 2015

Professor Stephen Hawking believes that a major nuclear war could end the human race but space travel can save it.

Speaking at London’s Science Museum, the 73-year-old said that landing on the moon gave us a new perspective of life on Earth and this outlook must develop if we are to survive.

Adaeze Uyanwah, 24, who was at the audience asked what human shortcomings he would alter, and which virtues he would enhance if this was possible.

He replied: 'The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all.

'A major nuclear war would be the end of civilisation, and maybe the end of the human race.

'The quality I would most like to magnify is empathy. It brings us together in a peaceful, loving state.'

He added that space exploration could save human race.

'Sending humans to the moon changed the future of the human race in ways that we don't yet understand,' he said.

'It hasn't solved any of our immediate problems on planet Earth, but it has given us new perspectives on them and caused us to look both outward and inward.

'I believe that the long term future of the human race must be space and that it represents an important life insurance for our future survival, as it could prevent the disappearance of humanity by colonising other planets.'