Link: www.hawking.org.uk (extern) (Archiv-Version vom 02.01.2005)Nun, der Widerspruch lässt sich erklären, und zwar durch Hawking's unterschiedliche Aussagen und eigene widersprüchliche Spekulationen zum selben Thema.
z.B. sein Vortrag "Life in the Universe" auf seiner Website:
http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/lindex.html (Archiv-Version vom 02.01.2005)1.
The round trip to the nearest star would take at least 8 years, and to the centre of the galaxy, about a hundred thousand years. In science fiction, they overcome this difficulty, by space warps, or travel through extra dimensions. But I don't think these will ever be possible, no matter how intelligent life becomes.
2.
What are the chances that we will encounter some alien form of life, as we explore the galaxy? If the argument about the time scale for the appearance of life on Earth is correct, there ought to be many other stars, whose planets have life on them. Some of these stellar systems could have formed 5 billion years before the Earth. So why is the galaxy not crawling with self designing mechanical or biological life forms? Why hasn't the Earth been visited, and even colonised? I discount suggestions that UFO's contain beings from outer space. I think any visits by aliens, would be much more obvious, and probably also, much more unpleasant.
3.
It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth, about 70 million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. A few small early mammals survived, but anything as large as a human, would have almost certainly been wiped out. It is difficult to say how often such collisions occur, but a reasonable guess might be every twenty million years, on average. If this figure is correct, it would mean that intelligent life on Earth has developed only because of the lucky chance that there have been no major collisions in the last 70 million years. Other planets in the galaxy, on which life has developed, may not have had a long enough collision free period to evolve intelligent beings.
4.
I prefer a fourth possibility: there are other forms of intelligent life out there, but that we have been overlooked. Meeting a more advanced civilisation, at our present stage, might be a bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus. I don't think they were better off for it.
Ergo: seine wissenschaftliche Ratio zweifelt an extraterristischem Leben, nichts desto weniger spielt sein forschender Intellekt mit dem Gedanken, es gäbe doch ein solches.......hofft aber gleichzeitig, dass es uns nicht findet und "ausbeutet" wie seinerzeit Columbus die Indianer.....
Festgelegt hat er sich nicht, wie könnte er auch. Er verwirrt damit nur leichtgläubige Naturen und hat wahrscheinlich noch seine Freude daran. Eine der letzten Freuden, die ihm noch geblieben ist. Sorry für den Sarkasmus.