Martin Rees
Martin Rees
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, OM, FRS, FREng, FMedSciis a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He has been Astronomer Royal since 1995 and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010. Rees currently sits on the Board of Sponsors for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth23 June 1942
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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.
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The lives of those such as Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein are plainly of interest in their own right, as well as for the light they shed on the way these great scientists worked. But are 'routine' scientists as fascinating as their science? Here I have my doubts.
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A monkey is unaware that atoms exist. Likewise, our brainpower may not stretch to the deepest aspects of reality. The bedrock nature of space and time, and the structure of our entire universe, may remain 'open frontiers' beyond human grasp.
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The challenge of global warming should stimulate a whole raft of manifestly benign innovations - for conserving energy and generating it by 'clean' means (biofuels, innovative renewables, carbon sequestration, and nuclear fusion).
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The Cern laboratory in Geneva was set up in 1955 to bring together European scientists who wished to pursue research into the nuclear and sub-nuclear world. Physicists then had greater clout than other scientists because the memory of their role in the Second World War was fresh in people's minds.
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The first arrival of earthly life on another celestial body ranks as an epochal event not only for our generation, but in the history of our planet. Neil Armstrong was at the cusp of the Apollo programme. This was a collective technological effort of epic scale, but his is the one name sure to be remembered centuries hence.
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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.
worry climate experts
I'm not a specialist in the science but I have followed it fairly closely and it seems to me that there is among the experts a clear consensus that potential climate change is something to worry about.
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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.
mean ice giving
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.
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The politics is far harder than the science. And even if we accept the science we have a big issue of how to deal with it.
country cutting thinking
I think all countries need to aim to cut the CO2 emissions per person, taking account of externalities like imports and exports.
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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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All space projects push the frontiers of technology and are drivers of innovation.