Contact with aliens is too risky says Stephen Hawking by Zuzana Zelenakova

According to British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking it is almost certain that aliens exist, however, he warns at the same time that possible contact could be “too risky”. There are about 100 billion galaxies in the universe and with such a number it is most likely that life evolved also in other places, not only on Earth. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," said Hawking. "The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like." He compared visit by aliens to Christopher Columbus landing in America for the first time, "which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans". People have tri! ed to reach extraterrestrial civilizations before sending radio beams or probes bearing carvings of human beings and the location of our planet into the space. Hawking says that life elsewhere in the universe is most likely to exist in form of simple microbes. When it comes to extraterrestrial life closer to our home planet, there is growing evidence of it on Mars and it could possibly exist on Europa, one of Jupiter´s moons. "We will only know for sure when the next generation of spacecraft, fine-tuned to search for life, are launched to the moons of Jupiter and the arid plains of Mars in the coming decades." Stephen Hawking, aged 68, held a prestigious post of professor of mathematics called Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, England, for thirty years. He retired in October 2009. He specializes in theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity. One of his best-known scientific works is Hawking radiation, sometimes called Bekenstein-Hawking ! radiation, which is a theoretical prediction that black holes ! should e mit radiation. Hawking is suffering from neuro-muscular dystrophy that left him almost completely paralyzed. He communicates with the world through voice synthesizer.

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by Zuzana Zelenakova for Cantell TV (http://cantell.tv)

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