科學分享類 長期徵稿 英譯中
Stephen Hawking Warns:
Humanity May Have Less Than 600 Years to Leave Earth
史蒂芬.霍金說，人類至多還能在地球上生活600年
Earth may be uninhabitable just a few centuries from now, so humanity should prepare to spread out into the cosmos, Stephen Hawking has advised.（Credit: Flickr/NASA HQ PHOTO）
史蒂芬.霍金建議說，地球在幾個世紀之後可能就不再適宜居住了，所以人類應該要做好向宇宙遷徙的準備。（圖片來源：Flickr/NASA圖庫）
If humanity doesn't become a truly spacefaring species in the next five centuries or so, we may well go extinct, Stephen Hawking said, according to media reports.
據媒體報導， 史蒂芬.霍金說，如果在未來五個世紀左右不能真正實現星際遷徙，人類很可能會滅亡。
During a video presentation Sunday (Nov. 5) at the Tencent Web Summit in Beijing, the famed cosmologist warned that the ever-rising human population, and its mounting energy needs, could render Earth uninhabitable by the year 2600, according to the British newspaper The Sun.
據英國《太陽報》報導， 11月5日，史蒂芬.霍金以採訪視頻的方式亮相於在北京舉行的2017騰訊WE大會。視頻中，這位著名的宇宙學家警告，由於人口不斷膨脹以及能源需求增加，到2600年，地球將不再適宜居住。
Hawking therefore advised that we get our act together and "boldly go where no one has gone before," The Sun reported.
因此，霍金建議我們齊心協力，「勇敢地開拓尚未有人涉足的地方」。
During his talk, Hawking also highlighted the exploration potential of Breakthrough Starshot, a $100 million project that aims to develop tiny, uncrewed, sail-equipped probes that will be accelerated to 20 percent the speed of light by powerful lasers.
談話中，霍金還特別強調了「突破攝星」研發計劃的探測潛力。這個計劃斥資1億，旨在研發由超強雷射驅動且裝著光帆的、速度可達到光速五分之一的微型無人探測器。（據百度百科，光速約為300,000km/s， 五分之一光速相當於60,000 km/s）
Such nanocraft could get to Mars in less than an hour and theoretically fly by the closest exoplanet to Earth — the possibly habitable Proxima b, which lies about 4.2 light-years from us — after a space journey of just 20 years, Hawking and other Starshot team members have said.
霍金及「攝星」團隊成員說，這種納米太空船能在一個小時之內到達火星，理論上，只需要20年的時間就能夠飛達離地球最近的可能宜居的恆星——半人馬座比鄰星b（距離地球約4.2光年）。
"Maybe if all goes well, sometime a little after the middle of the century, we'll have our first picture of another planet that may be life-bearing orbiting the nearest star," Breakthrough StarshotExecutive Director Pete Worden, the former head of NASA's Ames Research Center, said at the summit in Beijing, according to The Sun.
據《太陽報》報導，前NASA艾姆斯研究中心主任、「突破攝星」計劃的執行董事Pete Worden在北京的騰訊WE大會上發言稱，「如果一切順利，本世紀中葉左右，我們就能夠收到最近的星系中可能存在生命的其他星球的第一張圖像。」
來源：https://www.livescience.com/60921-stephen-hawking-humanity-must-leave-earth.html
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