Read the extract given below and do the quiz.

Hawking could not fully comprehend the sheer scale of the universe or how it came into being in the first
place. “But one can’t help asking the question: Why does the universe exist?” he said in 1991. “I don’t
know an operational way to give the question or answer, if there is one, a meaning. But it bothers me. My
goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

But Hawking saw the possibility of getting a second Earth (or two) out in the vastness of space. Just
a few months ago, he said humanity would be doomed if they stayed on planet Earth due to climate
change, a killer virus, asteroid impact, warfare etc. and called on governments to expedite research to
send people to other planets within at least the next 200 years. “Spreading out into space will completely
change the future of humanity. It may also determine whether we have any future at all,” he told a
reporter.

He did admit to the possibility of finding alien life, but personally would not savour such an
encounter. “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbia landed in America, which
didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans. We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life
might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet” he said. In 2015 he teamed up with Russian
billionaire Yuri Milner who has launched a series of projects aimed at finding evidence of alien life. The
decade-long Breakthrough Listen project aims to step up the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
by listening out for alien signals with more sensitivity than ever before.

Hawking was also intrigued about the possibility of high-speed space travel. He gave his blessings to
the Starshot Initiative, announced in 2016 that envisages sending tiny light-propelled robot space craft on
a 20-year voyage to the Alpha Centauri star system. He had even booked a seat Sir Richard Branson’s
Virgin Galactic suborbital space plane and rehearsed for the trip by floating inside a steep-diving NASA
aircraft – dubbed the “Vomit Comet” used to simulate weightlessness.

On the ground, he travelled around Cambridge at surprising speed, travelled and lectured widely
around the world (his last lecture was delivered in Japan this year), and enjoyed his fame. He retired from
his chair as Lucasian Professor of Cambridge in 2009 and took up a research position with the perimeter
institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.

Another area that Hawking took an interest in was Artificial Intelligence, which he claimed would
soon reach a level where it will be a ‘new form of life that will outperform humans.’ He even went so far
as to say that AI may replace humans altogether. “Someone will design AI that improves and replicates
itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans. Some form of government is needed to
control the technology.”

For all his seriousness about the depths of the universe and other matters such as AI, Hawking was
known for his brilliant sense of humour and off-the cuff quotes.

Perhaps this was of overcoming his disability and giving hope to sufferers. “Life would be tragic if it
weren’t funny,” he once said.

-by Pramod De Silva-

Sunday Observer
18, March 2018