'Mars is the only solution for the survival of humanity'

In his book, Michio Kaku has made shocking predictions which uncannily echo what Stephen Hawking had said once – that humans must leave the Earth or humanity will perish.

(Representational image)

New Delhi: After British physicist, Stephen Hawking – known for being quite vocal about his thoughts on alien encounters with humans – a theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku has passionately argued that our future lies in the stars – literally.

In his new book called 'The Future of Humanity', Kaku has unabashedly discussed what many people around the world pointedly ignore – aliens.

In conversation with National Geographic, Kaku spoke at length about the transformation of space travel, laser porting and life on Mars.

In his book, he has made shocking predictions which uncannily echo what Stephen Hawking had said once – that humans must leave the Earth or humanity will perish.

Talking about this to National Geographic, Kaku explained that removing the entire population of Earth and transporting them to Mars is an impossible task and this is merely a backup plan, in case something does happen.

Kaku emphasized the need for everyone to make every possible effort to curb environmental vices like global warming and climate change and other problems such as nuclear proliferation and bio-engineered germ warfare in the meantime.

Another interesting picture he painted in his book was of ballet dancing on Mars. Explaining exactly how this thought came about, Kaku told National Geographic that the laws of gravity on Earth and Mars were poles apart – on Mars the gravity is only 30 percent of Earth – therefore, the physical constraints will be different.

While Olympic athletes understand the gravity on Earth, ice skaters can’t do anything more than a quad; four rotations in the air. But, if an Olympics event is held on Mars, people may be able to do four, five, six, seven rotations in the air, and ballet, or acrobatics, and gymnastics.

“A whole new set of athletes could be formed because they are adapted to a new environment where the gravity and air pressure is lower.”

With the 'fourth wave of Science' being introduced, which includes artificial intelligence, biotech, and nanotech, he believes that it will change the way we view Mars. Plants and algae can be genetically modified to thrive in the Martian atmosphere with the use of robotic workers.

While Kaku lauded the efforts of NASA and Elon Musk, he said that there was still a long way to go to make deep space travel as smooth as possible and there are still a number of things to take into consideration.

If we want to send humans to the stars, we have to look at the possibility of deep freezing astronauts and thawing them at the other end, since Earth-like planets would take hundreds of years to reach, he said. His own preferred solution? Laser porting.

Last month, at a Reddit AMA, Kaku predicted that humans will come face to face with aliens for the first time within the next century, but he also said that the meeting certainly won't be cordial.