Hawking described various "things that could go wrong" to an audience of hundreds attending the first in a series of BBC Reith Lectures, which pertain to research about black holes. He asserted the necessity for colonization of other planets to ensure survival of the human species. According to the BBC, Hawking cautioned:
"Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year might be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand 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.
"However, we will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period."
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