"In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?"
NEW YORK (AP) — Some questions even stump Stephen Hawking. The famed British astrophysicist and best-selling author has turned to Yahoo Answers, a new feature in which anyone can pose a question for fellow Internet users to try to answer. By Friday afternoon, nearly 17,000 Yahoo Inc. users had responded.
Hawking's question: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?"
Some of the answers were short — "get rid of nuclear weapons" — and others vague — "Somehow we will." Many were doubtful: "I don't think it is possible unless we expand into space," one user wrote.
A number of people suggested thinking differently, ending bickering or fostering cooperation.
Officials at the University of Cambridge, where Hawking is a mathematics professor, confirmed that Hawking wrote the message but said he would have no further comment.
Hawking's groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe has made him one of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation. Author of the global best seller A Brief History of Time, Hawking is known for proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end.
Lately, he's been pondering about the fate of humans.
In a June 13 speech in Hong Kong, Hawking said the survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth.
He said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.
Hawking is one of 10 celebrity questioners Yahoo solicited as part of its "Ask The Planet" campaign.
The Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company spent weeks trying to track Hawking down but got his participation within a day of reaching the correct assistant, said Patrick Crane, vice president of marketing for Yahoo Search.
The question was submitted a few days before the Hong Kong speech and posted this past Wednesday.
Over the next week, Yahoo employees are expected to work with Hawking to sift through the answers and select one or several to highlight as best responses.
Yahoo Answers, like an offering from Google Inc. and one planned by Microsoft Corp., is among the services aimed at tapping the collective intelligence. It's based on the premise that humans as a group can do a better job at finding information than machines or any single person can.
Anyone can ask or answer a question, regardless of expertise, although Yahoo will eventually implement a rating system meant to elevate users with better reputations, based on their past questions and answers.
Questions typically get 6 to 10 answers.
Past celebrity participants include Donald Trump, Isaiah Washington, Al Gore and "Click & Clack," the hosts of NPR's Car Talk. U2 lead singer Bono closed the celebrity series Friday by asking, "What can we do to make poverty history?"
Sandton ice ball fell out of clear sky, says scientist
by Karyn Maughan The giant ice ball that fell from the Douglasdale sky has put the suburb on the meteorological map.
Research conducted by a Nasa- affiliated scientist suggests that the frozen object that plummeted from the clear sky last Friday morning was one of the first "megacryometeors" to be recorded in Africa.
And Professor Jesus Martinez-Frias, head of the Planetary Geology Laboratory at the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid, has warned that the microwave oven-sized ice object could be a portent of "serious environmental problems".
Frias is an authority in the megacryometeor phenomenon, having written a number of research papers on possible reasons for its development. According to his research, falling ice balls have been recorded since the 19th century.
And, six years ago, a plague of falling ice balls caused extensive damage to cars and an industrial storage facility in the Iberian Peninsula.
Fortunately, Africa's first recorded ice ball was far less destructive, melting almost immediately after it shattered on its pavement landing area
Frias agreed with security guard Sizwe Sofika, who witnessed the frozen object plummet from the sky, that the ice ball was not frozen human waste ejected from a plane.
Sofika and guard S'Wester Moya were sitting in a security booth outside the Fontana de la Vita complex when they saw a white object plunge from the sky.
The impact of the ice ball's fall created a small crater on the pavement, which was covered with pieces of broken ice.
"Megacryometeors are not the classical big hailstones, ice from aircraft (waste water or tank leakage), nor the simple result of icing processes at high altitudes," Frias said.
"The term 'megacryometeor' was recently coined to name large atmospheric ice conglomerations, which, despite sharing many textural, hydrochemical and isotopic features detected in large hailstones, are formed under clear-sky conditions," he said.
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