Stephen Hawking predicts humans will turn the world into a 'ball of fire' within 600 years

(Image credit: NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images)

published 8 November 2017

It's getting hot in here — and if you won't take Nelly's word for it, take Stephen Hawking's.

The world population is soaring, and humans' demand for energy is skyrocketing along with it. That's why, the physicist guesses, we have less than 600 years until humans turn Earth into a "ball of fire."

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Luckily, there's a solar system just four light years away. Breakthrough Starshot, a project backed by Hawking and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is working to get there, developing tiny spaceships propelled by laser beams that could travel to Mars in less than an hour. That means they could speed to Alpha Centauri and its Earthlike planet Proxima b in about 20 years, according to Scientific American.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.