“Look up at the stars, not down at your feet”: Wise words from Stephen Hawking in last book

_{The scientist boarded a modified Boeing 727 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 2007, which then performed parabolic arcs where the aircraft is in free fall, allowing the passengers to experience moments of weightlessness.}

Today, as you read this, the body of Stephen Hawking lies in Westminster Abbey between the graves of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. The last book by the great scientist, who died in 2018, was published posthumously by his family, notably daughter Lucy. “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” is a must read if you want to understand what on Earth are we doing here.

Hawking was an author, physicist and director of cosmology at Cambridge University who was confined to a wheelchair by motor neurone disease. In the book Hawking wrote about God, “We are each free to believe what we want and it is my view that there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realisation. There is probably no heaven and no afterlife. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe.”

Hawking wrote that the human race will “almost inevitably” be killed off in time by nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, global warming, asteroid collision or dangers we humans don’t even know about. We need to cut the bonds tying us to Earth and colonise other planets.

Given the vastness of the universe, aliens likely exist. “But we should not contact them. If aliens visit us, the outcome would be as much as when Columbus landed in America, which did not turn out well for native Americans.”

Hawking warned about the rise of artificial intelligence. “A super-intelligent AI would be extremely efficient at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we are in trouble.”

He wrailed against the orange fraud Trump when he was first elected. “By denying the evidence of climate change . . .Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world for us and our children.” Runaway climate change could “lead to the Earth becoming like Venus with a temperature of 250 degrees Celsius.”

The book’s final chapter is headlined, “How Do We Shape the Future?”. The great scientist’s answer: “Look up at the stars, not down at your feet.”