- Professor Stephen Hawking has painted
a future of genetically-modified (GM) humans - and the discovery of a mathematical
"theory of everything", in a speech at Cambridge University.
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- He also said that if aliens had visited
Earth - which he did not consider likely - it would have been "more
like Independence Day than ET".
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- Professor Hawking, of the Department
of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, was speaking
at the launch of events marking the sixth National Science Week.
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- The week coincides with the 10-day Science,
Engineering and Technology (SET) '99, designed to bring the public closer
to scientific research.
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- In a typically wide-ranging talk - entitled
The Future of Science - the professor said he did not advocate the genetic
redesign of human beings, but saw it as inevitable as scientists gained
a more complete understanding of DNA.
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- "Many people will say that genetic
engineering on humans should be banned, but I rather doubt if they will
be able to prevent it," he said.
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- "Genetic engineering on plants and
animals will be allowed for economic reasons and someone is bound to try
it on humans."
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- He said that it was unlikely to occur
in the next 100 years, but GM humans would arrive in the next millennium
and they would bear little resemblance to the people of today.
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- Professor Hawking added that the only
way he could see such a situation being prevented was in the event of a
"totalitarian world order".
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- He also said he was "confident"
that the so-called theory of everything - something of a mathematical "Holy
Grail" - would be discovered within the next 100 years and possibly
in the next 20.
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- Professor Hawking himself is acknowledged
as one to the world's greatest living mathematicians.
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- "To a large extent we will have
to rely on mathematical beauty and certainty to discover the theory of
everything," he said.
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- Travel to the stars
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- "I will take a bet on 50/50 odds
that it will be within the next 20 years."
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- Scientists would also develop computers
as complex as the human brains, he said.
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- The professor - author of the best-selling
A Brief History of Time - also predicted that human beings would voyage
to other planets and stars.
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- He said that if there was extra-terrestrial
life more advanced than that on Earth, it would probably leave us to develop
in our own primitive manner.
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- But it was more likely that aliens would
be less advanced than us, he added.
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