Stephen Hawking's Rules: Fear Aliens, 9/11 No Big Deal, Who Needs God?

By: Nate Jones

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Stephen Hawking is smarter than NewsFeed! So when he says things - like there's no way God created the universe - we should probably believe them. Here are the best of the physicist's often-controversial opinions.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing..."
--Hawking in an except from his new book The Grand Design, on why God might not exist.

"I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space."
--Hawking arguing that mankind must take to the stars to continue to survive as a species. (See some of mankind's greatest explorations and adventures.)

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach."
--Hawking on why we should be terrified of meeting aliens

"Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do."
--Hawking a month after 9/11, which was probably not the best time to be saying things like that

"God not only plays dice with the universe, but sometimes throws them where they can't be seen."
--Hawking arguing in 1976 that information could not be retrieved from a black hole, a controversial opinion in physics; Hawking reversed his position in 2004

"I think computer viruses should count as life. Maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image."
--Hawking on life and man's true nature

"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star..."
--Hawking putting human existence in perspective in Der Spiegel

"...But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special."
--Hawking make us feel a little better again, in the same interview