Science is the one culture that’s truly global – protons, proteins and Pythagoras’s Theorem are the same from China to Peru. It should transcend all barriers of nationality. It should straddle all faiths, too. Martin Rees Read Quote
The stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture (though maybe not in the United States Bible Belt, nor in parts of the Islamic world). Most people are at ease with the idea that our present biosphere is the outcome of four billion years of Darwinian evolution. Martin Rees Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I’m not myself religious but have no wish to insult or denigrate those who are. Martin Rees Read Quote
I think a few hundred years from now we’ll start having the ‘posthuman’ era of different species. Martin Rees Read Quote
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. Martin Rees Read Quote
We can trace things back to the earlier stages of the Big Bang, but we still don’t know what banged and why it banged. That’s a challenge for 21st-century science. Martin Rees Read Quote
