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Sir Martin Rees
(23 Jun 1942 - )
English cosmologist and astrophysicist who became Astronomer Royal in 1995. He studied the distribution of quasars, which he proposed drew their power from huge black holes.
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Science Quotes by Sir Martin Rees (16 quotes)
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
— Sir Martin Rees
Epigraph, without citation, in B.M. Oliver and J. Billingham (eds.), 'Life in the Universe', Project Cyclops: A Design Study of a System for Detecting Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life (Rev. Ed., Jul 1973). Also seen as “Absence of evidence is not identical with evidence of absence.” In Book Review, 'The Excavation of Roman and Mediaeval London (W.F. Grimes)', by A.R. Burn, The Classical Review (Jun 1969) New Series, 19, No. 2, 229-232.
Chandra [Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar] probably thought longer and deeper about our universe than anyone since Einstein.
— Sir Martin Rees
Quoted without citation in NASA MFSC News Release 98-253 from Marshall Space Flight Center, 'NASA Selects New Name And Sets New Launch Date For Advanced Space X-Ray Telescope' (21 Dec 1998). Several copies can be found with web search.
Charles Darwin [is my personal favorite Fellow of the Royal Society]. I suppose as a physical scientist I ought to have chosen Newton. He would have won hands down in an IQ test, but if you ask who was the most attractive personality then Darwin is the one you'd wish to meet. Newton was solitary and reclusive, even vain and vindictive in his later years when he was president of the society.
— Sir Martin Rees
From interview with Graham Lawton, 'One Minute with Martin Rees', in New Scientist (12 Dec 2009), 204, No. 2738.
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.
— Sir Martin Rees
…...
God invented space so that not everything had to happen in Princeton.
— Sir Martin Rees
In Our Cosmic Habitat (2003), Preface, ix. Written as a frivolous companion to the aphorism, “Time is nature's way to keep everything from happening all at once.”
I hope that in 50 years we will know the answer to this challenging question: are the laws of physics unique and was our big bang the only one? … According to some speculations the number of distinct varieties of space—each the arena for a universe with its own laws—could exceed the total number of atoms in all the galaxies we see. … So do we live in the aftermath of one big bang among many, just as our solar system is merely one of many planetary systems in our galaxy? (2006)
— Sir Martin Rees
In 'Martin Rees Forecasts the Future', New Scientist (18 Nov 2006), No. 2578.
I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms that we can't conceive. And there could, of course, be forms of intelligence beyond human capacity—beyond as much as we are beyond a chimpanzee.
— Sir Martin Rees
As quoted by Robin McKie in 'Aliens Can't Hear Us, Says Astronomer', The Guardian (27 Jan 2010), reporting on “a special meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence” on 26 Jan 2010.
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.
— Sir Martin Rees
In 'Take Me to Your Mathematician', New Scientist (14 Feb 2009), 201, No. 2695.
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.
— Sir Martin Rees
In 'The Anthropic Universe', New Scientist (6 Aug 1987), 46.
It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new ideas on particle physics. The energies in the Big Bang were far higher than we can ever achieve on Earth. So by looking at evidence for the Big Bang, and by studying things like neutron stars, we are in effect learning something about fundamental physics.
— Sir Martin Rees
From editted transcript of BBC Radio 3 interview, collected in Lewis Wolpert and Alison Richards, A Passion For Science (1988), 33.
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.
— Sir Martin Rees
Lecture at Wired 2013 (18 Oct 2013).
Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.
— Sir Martin Rees
Lecture (2006), reprinted as 'Dark Materials'. As cited in J.G. Ballard, 'The Catastrophist', collected in Christopher Hitchens, Arguably: Selected Essays (2011), 353
Science is advancing faster than ever, and on a broader front.
— Sir Martin Rees
Opening line of 'Preface', Our Final Hour: A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century—On Earth and Beyond (2003), vii.
Telescopes are in some ways like time machines. They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past.
We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you’re less romantic you can say we’re the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine.
We’ve made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmos, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.
We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you’re less romantic you can say we’re the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine.
We’ve made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmos, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.
— Sir Martin Rees
…...
The physicist is like someone who’s watching people playing chess and, after watching a few games, he may have worked out what the moves in the game are. But understanding the rules is just a trivial preliminary on the long route from being a novice to being a grand master. So even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the everyday world where complex structures can exist is a far more daunting task, and that’s an inexhaustible one I'm sure.
— Sir Martin Rees
In Lewis Wolpert and Alison Richards, A Passion For Science (1988), 37.
The Universe is full of peculiar coincidences.
— Sir Martin Rees
As given in an epigraph, without citation, in David M. Harland (ed.), The Big Bang: A View from the 21st Century (2003), ix. Webmaster has not yet been able to verify its source. If you know the primary source, please contact Webmaster.
See also:
- 23 Jun - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Rees's birth.
- Video: Earth in its Final Century - Martin Rees talk (2005, 18 min).
- Martin Rees - context of quote The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
- Martin Rees - context of quote The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess - Large image (800 x 600 px)
- Martin Rees - context of quote Cosmos…laboratory…to test new ideas on particle physics - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
- Martin Rees - context of quote Cosmos…laboratory…to test new ideas on particle physics - Large image (800 x 600 px)
- Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning, by Martin Rees. - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Martin Rees.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
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