7 Predictions From Stephen Hawking About The Future Of The Planet And Beyond

It's been quite a year, with many wondering if 2016 was simply the worst year ever. Cambridge University professor and physicist Stephen Hawking, however, sees a much darker future ahead. "Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years," Hawking, who is 73 and has been living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for more than half a decade, told BBC News in January. "By that time, we should have spread out in space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race." But, he added, until humanity can live somewhere other than this planet, we're walking on eggshells: "We will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period."