11 /26/2005
Notes and thoughts from Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell, chapter 6, Star Trek or Not.

The world’s population plotted through time is a measure of our technological ability to preserve life. During recorded history, this measure has only increased. Of course, there are certain exceptions: the Black death etc. within the last 200 years, population growth has become exponential. Currently, the world population doubles every 40 years. Other measures of technological growth include power consumption and the number of scientific articles published. All three of these measures cannot continue to grow at the same rate that they are now. So what are the possibilities?

Putting self-destruction aside, one major consideration in considering how future development will be shaped would be whether faster than light travel is possible. Since we do not yet possess a complete theory of physics, we cannot rule such a possibility out. However, we do know laws of physics which apply to almost all “normal” situations.  Read more... (779 words, estimated 3:07 mins reading time)


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