[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: Professor Stephen
Hawking and other scientists
believe that to secure the
future of the human species,
we must colonize another planet.
 Just a risks annihilation.
It could be an asteroid
hitting the Earth.
It could be a new
virus, climate change,
nuclear war, artificial
intelligence gone rogue.
We can, and must, use our
curiosity and intelligence
to look to the stars.
We must do it now
before humanity
is overtaken by some
disaster that we can
neither anticipate nor control.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: For humans
to survive, we
need to find a planet that's
rocky and about the same size
and density as the Earth
so that its gravity
will be similar to our own.
Then, the crucial thing
we need to sustain life
is liquid water at the surface.
That means we need to
find a planet that orbits
in the habitable
zone of its star,
the distance where
the temperature is
just perfect for liquid water.
For our sun, a
yellow dwarf star,
the habitable zone stretches
from around the orbit of Venus
to the orbit of Mars.
Earth sits neatly
right in the middle.
We now know that
there is a planet
around our stellar
next door neighbor
that could be suitable
for colonization.
Welcome to Proxima
B. It's a little more
massive than the
Earth and it's almost
certainly a rocky planet.
And there might just be
liquid water at the surface.
Proxima B might be
our best destination
for mankind's new home.
But although it's
our nearest planet,
Proxima B is still a
very long way away.
Getting there, even with the
fastest rockets we have today,
would take thousands of years.
Professor Hawking
believes this will
be one of our biggest hurdles.
 I have no doubt that
we will eventually
find ways of crossing the
immense distances of space
in just a few years.
One of our species'
great strengths
is embracing new ideas
and evolving them
into cutting edge technologies.
Just look at advances
we've made in the fields
of medicine, communications,
and electronics.
We only built the first
silicon chips 60 years ago.
Now, it powers just about
every aspect of our lives.
Our ingenuity will
get us to Proxima B.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
