Hawking Aliens

About five years ago I grabbed a chance to see Stephen Hawking lecture on the "Origins of the Universe." It was quite the lecture in terms of the content, most of which went over my head, but also in terms of how he communicates and his excellent sense of humor.

From MSNBC...

British physicist Stephen Hawking claims in a new documentary titled "Into the Universe With Stephen Hawking" that intelligent alien life forms almost certainly exist — but warns that communicating with them could be "too risky."

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet," Hawking said. The 68-year-old scientist said a visit by extraterrestrials to Earth might well be like Christopher Columbus arriving in the Americas, "which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans."

Hawking said an attack by interstellar predators is just one of the dismaying possibilities in the search for intelligent life beyond Earth. Another possibility is that intelligence itself might be inimical to life. Hawking pointed out that humanity has put itself on the edge of its own destruction by creating nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. "Perhaps they all blow themselves up soon after they discover that E=mc2.

Interesting points.