Physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking is urging humans to further explore outer space in the hopes of finding a way for human life to sustain.
The Los Angeles Times reports that during a lecture at Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute, Hawking, 71, warned that the extinction of the human race is pending and that in order to avoid it, we would need to figure out how to live in space.
"We must continue to go into space for humanity," Hawking said. "We won't survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet."
This is not the first time Hawking has encouraged further exploration of outer space. Back in 2008, at a 2008 ceremony for the 50th anniversary of NASA, Hawking compared space exploration to Europeans discovering the New World over 500 years ago.
"Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect," Hawking said at the NASA ceremony. "It will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all."
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