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I'm not myself religious but have no wish to insult or denigrate those who are.

Martin Rees

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Martin Rees
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: June 23
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
Cosmologist
Physicist
Politician
University Teacher
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Baron Rees of Ludlow
Martin John Rees
Baron Rees of Ludlow
OM
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Lord Martin Rees
Professor Martin John Rees
Baron Rees of Ludlow
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More quotes by Martin Rees

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The important point there is that when people talk about a mean temperature rise of say two, three or four degrees that's a sort of global average which really is a signature of large scale change in climatic patterns.
Martin Rees
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If we ever establish contact with intelligent aliens living on a planet around a distant star ... They would be made of similar atoms to us. They could trace their origins back to the big bang 13.7 billion years ago, and they would share with us the universe's future. However, the surest common culture would be mathematics.
Martin Rees
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In this century, not only has science changed the world faster than ever, but in new and different ways. Targeted drugs, genetic modification, artificial intelligence, perhaps even implants into our brains - may change human beings themselves.
Martin Rees
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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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The universe is still a place of mystery and wonder.
Martin Rees
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The U.S., France, Germany and Canada have all responded to the financial crisis by boosting rather than cutting their science funding. The U.K. has not.
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.
Martin Rees
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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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It's better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science-it's a lot more fun, and no more likely to be wrong.
Martin Rees
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Devastation could arise insidiously, rather than suddenly, through unsustainable pressure on energy supplies, food, water and other natural resources. Indeed, these pressures are the prime 'threats without enemies' that confront us.
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.
Martin Rees
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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.
Martin Rees
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I think a few hundred years from now we'll start having the 'posthuman' era of different species.
Martin Rees
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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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Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have.
Martin Rees
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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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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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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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Experiments that crash atoms together could start a chain reaction that erodes everything on Earth.
Martin Rees
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In the beginning there were only probabilities. The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.
Martin Rees