[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Professor Stephen Hawking and other scientists believe that to secure the future of the human species, we must colonize another planet. Just a risks annihilation. It could be an asteroid hitting the Earth.
It could be a new virus, climate change, nuclear war, artificial intelligence gone rogue. We can, and must, use our curiosity and intelligence to look to the stars. We must do it now before humanity is overtaken by some disaster that we can neither anticipate nor control.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: For humans to survive, we need to find a planet that's rocky and about the same size and density as the Earth so that its gravity will be similar to our own. Then, the crucial thing we need to sustain life is liquid water at the surface. That means we need to find a planet that orbits in the habitable zone of its star, the distance where the temperature is just perfect for liquid water.
For our sun, a yellow dwarf star, the habitable zone stretches from around the orbit of Venus to the orbit of Mars. Earth sits neatly right in the middle. We now know that there is a planet around our stellar next door neighbor that could be suitable for colonization.
Welcome to Proxima B. It's a little more massive than the Earth and it's almost certainly a rocky planet. And there might just be liquid water at the surface.
Proxima B might be our best destination for mankind's new home. But although it's our nearest planet, Proxima B is still a very long way away. Getting there, even with the fastest rockets we have today, would take thousands of years.
Professor Hawking believes this will be one of our biggest hurdles. I have no doubt that we will eventually find ways of crossing the immense distances of space in just a few years. One of our species' great strengths is embracing new ideas and evolving them into cutting edge technologies.
Just look at advances we've made in the fields of medicine, communications, and electronics. We only built the first silicon chips 60 years ago. Now, it powers just about every aspect of our lives.
Our ingenuity will get us to Proxima B.
