I wrote a post the other day about the proposed one-way human mission to “colonize” Mars. You may recall that some 78,000 people have supposedly applied to go. I wondered why anyone would want to leave Earth for “a cold, barren has-been lump of rock,” and called the whole idea ridiculous.

A friend sent me a link to an article about Stephen Hawking, who is reported to be urging people to think about leaving Earth because — God help us — the sun will swallow our planet in 7.6 billion years.

Hmm . . . I don’t think time is of the essence, do you? Well, Stephen reportedly does.

Our long-time future is in space, he tells Big Think.com:  “It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn’t have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let’s hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load.”

Stephen figures man could annihilate himself, what with all the weapons and missiles he has stockpiled. And he is probably right.

However, I don’t see man destroying the planet — the Earth can get along fine without us once we have wiped ourselves out — and the 7.6-billion-year time frame doesn’t worry me too much (read: not at all).

And I gotta wonder: if man was to colonize another planet, would he suddenly be all peaceful and loving? Or would it be the same old, same old?

Jillian