hawking

The human race is likely to be wiped out by a doomsday virus before this millennium is over unless we set up colonies in space, Stephen Hawking warns. He says that biology, rather than physics, presents the biggest challenge to human survival.

?Although September 11 was horrible, it didn?t threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do,? says Hawking, the Cambridge University scientist who may be the world?s most famous physicist. ?In the long term, I am more worried about biology. Nuclear weapons need large facilities, but genetic engineering can be done in a small lab. You can?t regulate every lab in the world. The danger is that either by accident or design, we create a virus that destroys us.
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