Renowned British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has predicted that an asteroid colliding with Earth would likely cause another mass extinction event, wiping out all human beings in 1000 years.

Issuing the apocalyptic warning while delivering a speech at the Oxford University Union, Hawking said humanity might face extinction if humans don’t leave the Earth and find another exoplanet before such a destructive event.

The renowned astrophysicist said, “Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it becomes a near certainty in the next 1,000 or 10,000 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.”

More than 600,000 asteroids in our solar system are known to scientists, and American space agency NASA is regularly tracking asteroids that might pose a risk to our planet.

But in other words, only 15 or 20 per cent of asteroids that are larger than a few hundred meters in size are currently known to scientists. Most of those asteroids are located in the Asteroid Belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.