Time to leave the planet?

"Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next 1,000 or 10,000 years. By that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race."--theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking

This is like saying if you buy a thousand lottery tickets, you are nearly certain to win the big prize. However, he is right. If we stay here, we will eventually become chow for some cosmic Pac-man.

Risk management theory does tell us that putting all our eggs in the Earth's basket over a long period of time increases our long-term risk. Earth may seem safe now...until that big asteroid hits.

However, even though I am a firm believer in the long term need for humanity to leave the Earth, I also believe humans on Earth can take actions to protect themselves against some of the more likely long-term dangers in the universe.

For example, it is theoretically possible for humans to build a "shield" around Earth against random asteroids/meteors hitting the planet. Whether that shield is lasers, missiles, or just some kind of Star Trek-like shield remains to be seen. Granted, we probably won't build this tomorrow, but it needs to be on humanity's long-term agenda of things to-do.

There are theoretically ways to protect the Earth from nearly any cosmic anomaly, but it will take time and technology before we can get there.

On the bright side, with the technological singularity on the horizon, this may soon be a problem for our android overlords to fix.