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Cosmology does, I think, affect the way that we perceive humanity's role in nature. One thing we've learnt from astronomy is that the future lying ahead is more prolonged than the past. Even our sun is less than halfway through its life.

Martin Rees

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Martin Rees
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: June 23
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
Cosmologist
Physicist
Politician
University Teacher
Jórvík
Baron Rees of Ludlow
Martin John Rees
Baron Rees of Ludlow
OM
FRS
FREng
FMedSci
Lord Martin Rees
Professor Martin John Rees
Baron Rees of Ludlow
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Cosmology
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Even
Humanity
Astronomy
Thing
Lying
Halfway
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Life
Nature
Sun
Prolonged

More quotes by Martin Rees

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Science is a part of culture. Indeed, it is the only truly global culture because protons and proteins are the same all over the world, and it's the one culture we can all share.
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Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling real experiments and field trips and not just virtual reality.
Martin Rees
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Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have.
Martin Rees
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In the case of climate change, the threat is long-term and diffuse and requires broad international action for the benefit of people decades in the future. And in politics, the urgent always trumps the important, and that is what makes it a very difficult and challenging issue.
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God invented space so that not everything had to happen in Princeton.
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The extreme sophistication of modern technology - wonderful though its benefits are - is, ironically, an impediment to engaging young people with basics: with learning how things work.
Martin Rees
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To ensure continuing prosperity in the global economy, nothing is more important than the development and application of knowledge and skills.
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I would support peaceful co-existence between religion and science because they concern different domains. Anyone who takes theology seriously knows that it's not a matter of using it to explain things that scientists are mystified by.
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One of the computer models for a four degree temperature rise would give rise to a 10 degree temperature rise in Africa. And bear in mind also that in the depth of an ice age the mean temperature drop compared to the present was five degrees.
Martin Rees
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I hope that by 2050 the entire solar system will have been explored and mapped by flotillas of tiny robotic craft.
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I recall a lecture by John Glenn, the first American to go into orbit. When asked what went through his mind while he was crouched in the rocket nose-cone, awaiting blast-off, he replied, I was thinking that the rocket has 20,000 components, and each was made by the lowest bidder.
Martin Rees
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Experiments that crash atoms together could start a chain reaction that erodes everything on Earth.
Martin Rees
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Scientists surely have a special responsibility. It is their ideas that form the basis of new technology. They should not be indifferent to the fruits of their ideas. They should forgo experiments that are risky or unethical.
Martin Rees
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I have no religious belief myself, but I don't think we should fight about it. In particular, I think that we should not rubbish moderate religious leaders like the Archbishop of Canterbury because I think we all agree that extreme fundamentalism is a threat, and we need all the allies we can muster against it.
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The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is measured. It's uncontroversial. It's going up. We know that has a tendency to warm the atmosphere and we should be worried about that.
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In future, children won't perceive the stars as mere twinkling points of light: they'll learn that each is a 'Sun', orbited by planets fully as interesting as those in our Solar system.
Martin Rees
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Campaigning against religion can be socially counter-productive. If teachers take the uncompromising line that God and Darwinism are irreconcilable, many young people raised in a faith-based culture will stick with their religion and be lost to science.
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I'm a technological optimist in that I do believe that technology will provide solutions that will allow the world in 2050 to support 9 billion people at an acceptable standard of living. But I'm a political pessimist in that I am concerned about whether the science will be appropriately applied.
Martin Rees
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Science isn't just for scientists - it's not just a training for careers.
Martin Rees
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I'm not myself religious but have no wish to insult or denigrate those who are.
Martin Rees