Quotes.gg
Home
Tags
Terms and Conditions
Privacy Policy
Imprint
Made by
Last Media
Martin Rees
Popular Posts
#Tags
When scientists are asked what they are working on, their response is seldom 'Finding the origin of the universe' or 'Seeking to cure cancer.' Usually, they will claim to be tackling a very specific problem - a small piece of the jigsaw that builds up the big picture.
- Martin Rees
#Big Picture
#Picture
#Universe
#Up
#Will
There is an ever-widening gap between what science allows and what we should actually do. There are many doors science can open that should be kept closed, on prudential or ethical grounds.
- Martin Rees
#Doors
#Ethical
#Gap
#Open
#Science
It is foolish to claim, as some do, that emigration into space offers a long-term escape from Earth's problems. Nowhere in our solar system offers an environment even as clement as the Antarctic or the top of Everest.
- Martin Rees
#Earth
#Escape
#Problems
#Solar
#Space
It's often better to read first-rate science fiction than second-rate science - it's far more stimulating, and perhaps no more likely to be wrong.
- Martin Rees
#Better
#Science Fiction
#Science
#Wrong
There's now, for the first time, a huge gulf between the artefacts of our everyday life and what even a single expert, let alone the average child, can comprehend. The gadgets that now pervade young people's lives, iPhones and suchlike, are baffling 'black boxes' - pure magic to most people.
- Martin Rees
#Alone
#Black
#Gadgets
#Life
#Time
Space doesn't offer an escape from Earth's problems. And even with nuclear fuel, the transit time to nearby stars exceeds a human lifetime. Interstellar travel is therefore, in my view, an enterprise for post-humans, evolved from our species not via natural selection, but by design.
- Martin Rees
#Design
#Space
#Stars
#Time
#Travel
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
#Action
#Change
#Future
#People
#Politics
The bedrock nature of space and time and the unification of cosmos and quantum are surely among science's great 'open frontiers.' These are parts of the intellectual map where we're still groping for the truth - where, in the fashion of ancient cartographers, we must still inscribe 'here be dragons.'
- Martin Rees
#Nature
#Science
#Space
#Time
#Truth
Some things, like the orbits of the planets, can be calculated far into the future. But that's atypical. In most contexts, there is a limit. Even the most fine-grained computation can only forecast British weather a few days ahead. There are limits to what can ever be learned about the future, however powerful computers become.
- Martin Rees
#Computers
#Days
#Future
#Limits
#Weather
Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have.
- Martin Rees
#Achieve
#Claim
#Computers
#Human
#Will
If we ever established contact with intelligent life on another world, there would be barriers to communication. First, they would be many light years away, so signals would take many years to reach them: there would be no scope for quick repartee. There might be an IQ gap.
- Martin Rees
#Communication
#Life
#Light
#Reach
#World
In our interconnected world, novel technology could empower just one fanatic, or some weirdo with a mindset of those who now design computer viruses, to trigger some kind of disaster. Indeed, catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure - error rather than terror.
- Martin Rees
#Design
#Disaster
#Now
#Technology
#World
During the 20th century, we came to understand that the essence of all substances - their colour, texture, hardness and so forth - is set by their structure, on scales far smaller even than a microscope can see. Everything on Earth is made of atoms, which are, especially in living things, combined together in intricate molecular assemblages.
- Martin Rees
#Earth
#Everything
#Living
#See
#Together
If we do find ET, we will at least have something in common with them. They may live on planet Zog and have seven tentacles, but they will be made of the same kinds of atoms as us. If they have eyes, they will gaze out on the same cosmos as we do. They will, like us, trace their origins back to a 'Big Bang' 13.8 billion years ago.
- Martin Rees
#Back
#Cosmos
#Eyes
#Find
#Live
Given the scale of issues like global warming and epidemic disease, we shouldn't underestimate the importance of a can-do attitude to science rather than a can't-afford-it attitude.
- Martin Rees
#Attitude
#Global Warming
#Like
#Science
We are 'nuclear waste' from the fuel that makes stars shine; indeed, each of us contains atoms whose provenance can be traced back to thousands of different stars spread through our Milky Way.
- Martin Rees
#Back
#Milky Way
#Shine
#Stars
#Way
There are at least as many galaxies in our observable universe as there are stars in our galaxy.
- Martin Rees
#Galaxies
#Galaxy
#Our
#Stars
#Universe
There are lots of ideas which extend the Copernican principle one step further. We went from the solar system to the galaxy to zillions of galaxies and now to realising even that isn't all there is.
- Martin Rees
#Ideas
#Solar System
#Solar
#Step
#System
The most important advances, the qualitative leaps, are the least predictable. Not even the best scientists predicted the impact of nuclear physics, and everyday consumer items such as the iPhone would have seemed magic back in the 1950s.
- Martin Rees
#Best
#Impact
#Important
#iPhone
#Physics
Indeed, our everyday world presents intellectual challenges just as daunting as those of the cosmos and the quantum, and that is where 99 per cent of scientists focus their efforts. Even the smallest insect, with its intricate structure, is far more complex than either an atom or a star.
- Martin Rees
#Challenges
#Cosmos
#Focus
#Insect
#World
It is astonishing that human brains, which evolved to cope with the everyday world, have been able to grasp the counterintuitive mysteries of the cosmos and the quantum.
- Martin Rees
#Brains
#Cosmos
#Human
#Quantum
#World
We do not fully understand the consequences of rising populations and increasing energy consumption on the interwoven fabric of atmosphere, water, land and life.
- Martin Rees
#Consequences
#Energy
#Land
#Life
#Water
Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.
- Martin Rees
#Biodiversity
#Global Warming
#Human
Everything, however complicated - breaking waves, migrating birds, and tropical forests - is made of atoms and obeys the equations of quantum physics. But even if those equations could be solved, they wouldn't offer the enlightenment that scientists seek. Each science has its own autonomous concepts and laws.
- Martin Rees
#Enlightenment
#Everything
#Own
#Physics
#Science
#Waves
Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just 'virtual reality.'
- Martin Rees
#Education
#Field
#Real
#Reality
#Science
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
#Children
#Future
#Light
#Stars
#Sun
Advances in technology - hugely beneficial though they are - render us vulnerable in new ways. For instance, our interconnected world depends on elaborate networks: electric power grids, air traffic control, international finance, just-in-time delivery, and so forth.
- Martin Rees
#Finance
#New
#Power
#Technology
#World
Maybe the search for life shouldn't restrict attention to planets like Earth. Science fiction writers have other ideas: balloon-like creatures floating in the dense atmospheres of planets such as Jupiter, swarms of intelligent insects, nano-scale robots and more.
- Martin Rees
#Ideas
#Life
#Science
#Search
#Space
The images of Earth's delicate biosphere, contrasting with the sterile moonscape where the astronauts left their footsteps, have become iconic for environmentalists: these may indeed be the Apollo programme's most enduring legacy.
- Martin Rees
#Earth
#Footsteps
#Iconic
#Legacy
#Space
Load More
Your experience on this site will be improved by allowing cookies.
Allow cookies