Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking thinks space exploration is the key to humanity's future -- but we could doom ourselves if we don't fix our aggressive nature, he warns.
"The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression," Hawking, a professor at Cambridge University, said in response to a question posed during a tour of the Science Museum in London last week.
"It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory, or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all," Hawking continued, according to a report from the museum. "A major nuclear war would be the end of civilization, and maybe the end of the human race. The quality I would most like to magnify is empathy. It brings us together in a peaceful, loving state."
In December, Hawking warned about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. Hawking was also in the news earlier this week when Eddie Redmayne received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the physicist in the film "The Theory of Everything."
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