PANIC IN THE YEAR 2117! Stephen Hawking says humans must flee Earth within century.

It might be a bit premature to start packing, but the BBC’s Expedition New Earth will explore technological and scientific advances that will enable life in space or a colony on another planet, reports the Telegraph.

It will show “Hawking’s ambition isn’t as fantastical as it sounds—that science fact is closer to science fiction than we ever thought,” the BBC says, per Newsweek.

Elon Musk of SpaceX is already planning to send humans to Mars in the next decade. But while a Mars colony is a good idea, bringing new scientific discoveries, columnist Eric Mack says Hawking needs to give his head a shake if he honestly believes Mars, the moon, or anywhere else in our solar system will be more hospitable than Earth even after a host of disasters.

“Just cleaning up our own mess and starting over by rising from the rubble seems more practical” and more affordable than figuring out how to grow food or survive radiation poisoning on Mars, he writes at Forbes.

I suspect there’s quite a bit of life left in this old planet yet, but that doesn’t mean we need to stay here exclusively.