Stephen Hawking has spoken out about extraterrestrials, and is almost certain they exist. Furthermore, he believes that humans should be extremely cautious about first encounters.
“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the uber-genius is paraphrasing from almost every science fiction movie ever made.
He likened humanity’s first encounter with an alien species to Christopher Columbus landing in America, which “didn’t turn out too well for the Native Americans”.
As if ripping off the plots of Independence Day, War of the Worlds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers wasn’t bad enough, Hawking has previously been known to borrow heavily from Deep Impact and Armageddon.
“Sooner or later disasters such as an asteroid collision or a nuclear war could wipe us all out” said Hawking. It wasn’t clear whether Hawking had been considered to play either Bruce Willis’ role in Armageddon or Elijah Wood’s role in Deep Impact.
Apparently after nearly two decades of being one of the planet’s smartest individuals, Hawking is now ready for retirement, phoning it in with sci-fi plot rip offs. How long until he tells tale of a mythical alien from the planet Melmac that crash lands on earth and ends up living in suburban America and enjoys eating cats and avoiding the US military?
Source: Huffington Post
I find it hard to believe that supposedly the smartest man alive is getting ideas from summer blockbusters. I believe that Hawking is considering the very nature of evolution of any kind when he states that any intelligent life form we encounter is likely to be hostile. So maybe it’s not the biologists and cosmologists that are ripping off the sci-fi screenplay writers, but rather the other way around.