YouSaid · the spoken record

Martin Rees

lines on the record: 143
first: 2022-07-23
most recent: 2022-07-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And it was until 1930 that people knew about nuclear energy and knew what kept the sun shining for so long. So it was quite late that some of these key ideas came in, you know, which would completely transform Newton's views and, of course, the entire scale of the galaxy and the rest of the universe.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if we think about astronomy, then until about 1850, astronomy was a matter of the positions of how the stars and the planets moved around, etc. Of course, that goes back a long way, but Newton understood why the planets moved around in ellipses. But he didn't understand why the solar system was all in a plane, what we call the ecliptic, and he didn't understand it. No one did till the mid-19th century what the stars are made of. I mean, they were thought to be made of some fifth essence, not Earth, Earth, and water like everything else, you know, and was only after 1850 when people did use prisms more precisely to get spectra that they realized that the sun was made of the same stuff as the Earth, and indeed the stars were.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He'd like to know that everything was made of atoms. He'd like to know that if he looked a bit more carefully through his prisms and looked at light not just from the sun, but from Some flames, he might get the idea that different substances emitted light of different colors and he might have been twigged to discover some things that had to wait two or three hundred years. Could have given him those clues, I think.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a gap between what could be done and what We collectively decide to do. You could push forward some developments faster than we do.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Innovations are damaging, yes, yeah, yes. I would have thought that supersonic flight was something that would benefit only a tiny elite.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were very good reasons and we could have had supersonic flight, but Concord came and went during the 50 years during which.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it can be sort of slot dust slow. We'll take human spaceflight. There could be footprints on Mars if America had gone on spending 4% of the federal budget on the project after.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I suspect the iPhone 24 may not be too different from the iPhone 13 because they develop, but then they saturate and then maybe some new innovation takes over in stimulating economic growth.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was alive then and I thought it would only be 10 or 20 years further before they were footprints on Mars. But as we know for reasons we could all understand that still remains the high point of human space exploration. That's because it was funded for reasons of superpower rivalry at huge public expense. But let me give you another case, civil aviation. If you think of the change between 1919, when that was Orcock and Brown's first transatlantic fight to 1979, the first flight of the Jumbo Jet was a big change. But it's more than 50 years since 1969. And we still have Jumbo jets more or less the same. So that's an example of something which developed fast and changed over. And to take another analogy, we've had huge developments in mobile phones.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“but they are very poorly adapted to where they are. That's why they need a specification, whereas we're adapted to the earth quite well. So we don't need these modifications. We're happy to be humans living in the environment where our ancestors lived. So we don't have the same motive. So I think there's a difference. But I agree we don't want drastic changes probably in our lifestyle. And that indeed is a worry because some things are changing so fast. But I think I'd like to inject a note of caution. If you think of the way progress in one technology goes, it goes in a sort of spurt. It goes up very fast and then it levels off. Let me give you two examples. Well, the one we've had already, a human space flight. At the time of the Apollo program, which was only 12 years after Sputnik 1.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, absolutely. And that's why I think we ought to try and slow down the application of these Cuban enhancement techniques and cyberg techniques for humans for just that reason. I mean, that's why I want to lead into the people on Mars, let them do it.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and it needs us more human beings to help them cope with everyday life and look after them when they're sick. And so that seems to me the way in which the money raised in tax on these big companies should be deployed.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are automated, but those same people are given jobs where being a human is an asset. Then that's a plus plus situation. And so that's the way I think that we should benefit from these technologies, take over the mind-numbing jobs and use machines to make them more efficient, but enable the people so displaced to do jobs where we do want a human being. I mean, most people, when they're old, the rich people, if they have the choice, they want human carers and all that, don't they? They may want to have robots to help with some things. MTO bed pans and things like that, but they want real people and certainly in this country, I think even worse in America, the care of old people is completely inadequate.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think my solution would be that we should arrange to tax more heavily than big international conglomerates, which use the robots and use that tax to fund Decently paid, dignified posts. the kind where being a human being is important, above all, carers for old people, teachers' assistants for young, guarders in public parks, and things like that. And if the people who are now working in mind-nubbing jobs in Amazon warehouses or in telephone call centers”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thus, in the hands of decisions that we can't contest is a very dangerous one. I think we've got to be very careful of the extent to which AI, which can handle lots of information, actually makes the decisions without oversight. And I think we can use them as a supplement to take the case of radiology and cancer. I mean, it's true that the radiologist hasn't seen as many X-rays of cancer lungs as the machine. So the machine can certainly help. But you want the human to make the final decision. And I think that's true in most of these instances. But if we turn a bit to the short term concerns with robotics, I think the big worry, of course, is the affected has on people's self-respect and their labour market.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably in that context, it was probably good, but I think you're raising what is, of course, very much active issue in everyday life about the extent to which we should entrust any important decision to a machine. And there again, I'm very worried because I think if you are recommended for an operation or not given parot from prison or even denied credit by your bank, you feel you should be entitled to an explanation. It's not enough to be told that the machine has a more reliable record on the whole than humans have of making these decisions. You think you should be given reasons you could understand. And that's why I think the presence societal trend to take away the humans and leave”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“background artificial radio waves and that could be done by assembling using robots without people so on the moon and on mars i think Everything that's useful can be done by machines much more cheaply than by humans.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think it can be done much more cheaply, obviously, on Mars. And no one's thinking of sending humans to Enceladus or Europa. The outer planets. And the point is, we'll have much better robots because to take an example, you see these pictures of the moons of Saturn and the picture of Pluto and the comet taken by probes and Cassini spent 13 years going around Saturn and its moons after 70 year voyage. And those are all based on 1990s technology. And if you think of how smartphones have advanced in 20 years since then, just think how much better one could do instrumenting some very small, sophisticated probe and could send dozens of them to explore the outer planets. And that's the way to do that because no one thinks you could send humans that far. But I would apply the same argument to Mars and if you want to assemble big structures like, for instance, radio.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His advisors and very eloquent speech about how they have come to a noble end, etc. But of course there was a genuine risk at that time, but that may have been accepted, but clearly the crashes of the shuttle were not acceptable to the American public, even when they were told that this was only a 2% risk given how often they launched it. So that's what leads me to think that it's got to be left to the kind of people who are prepared to take these risks. And I think of American Adventures, there was a guy called Steve Fossett, who was aviated in all kinds of crazy things, you know, and then a guy who fell supersonically with the parachute from Wehalt. All these people, we all tear them on, they extend the bounds of humanity, but I don't think the public will be so happy to fund them.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think it's unlikely in my lifetime since I'm so ancient. But I think essentially it's going to happen. And I think that will indeed be exciting. And I hope there will be a small community by the end of a century. But as I say, I think they may go with one-way tickets or accepting the risk of no return. So they've got to be people like that. And I still think it's going to be hard to persuade the public to send people when you say straight out that they may never come back. But of course the Apollo astronauts, they took a high risk. And in fact, in my previous book, I quote the speech that had been written for Nixon to be read out if Neil Armstrong got stuck on the moon. It was written by one of his...”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First stage, and it's going to be great. It can launch over 100 tons into Earth orbit. And incidentally, that's going to be make it feasible to do things that I used to think were crazy, like having solar energy from space. That's no longer so crazy. If you can do that, and also for science, because its nose cone could contain within it something as big as the entire unfurled James Webb telescope mirror and therefore you could have a big telescope much more cheaply if you can launch it all in one piece. And so it's going to be hugely beneficial to science and to any practical use of space to have these cheaper rockets that are far more completely reusable than anybody's NASA had. So I think Mosques are a tremendous service to the space exploration. Hubble space technology through these rockets certainly.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's that, is that he had all the whole assembly within this one building, as it were, rather than depending on a supply chain. But I think it's also that he had a Silicon Valley culture in younger people, whereas the big aerospace companies, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, they had people who were left over from the Apollo program in some cases. And so they weren't quite so lively. And indeed, quite apart from the controversial issues of the future of human spaceflights in terms of the next generation of big rockets, then the one that Musk is going to launch for the first time this year, a huge one, is going to be far, far cheaper than the one that NASA's been working on at the same time. And that's because it will have a real...”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, so those who founded Google and all that and even Amazon, their beneficiaries, they're quite different category in my view from those who just shuffle around money or crypto coins and things like that. But I think if they use their money in these ways, that's fine. But I think it's true that far more money is owned by us collectively as taxpayers. But I think the fact is... In a democracy, there'd be big resistance to exposing human beings to very high risks. If in a sense we share responsibility for it. And that's the reason I think it could be done much more cheaply by...”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I agree. I think the people who've made the greatest wealth are people who've really been mega benefactors. I mean, I think some of them.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, I agree with that. I think the only different point I'd make is that this is going to be very expensive if it's done in a risk-averse way. And that's why I think we should be grateful to the billionaires if they're going to sort of foster these opportunities for thrill-seeking risk-takers who we can all admire.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but we have experiences where we can appreciate. Beauty and wonder and all that. And a zombie may not have those experiences.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These future entities, which were the main television universe, had no self-awareness. So there was nothing which could appreciate the wonder and mystery of the universe and the beauty of the universe in the way that we do. And so it does perhaps affect one's perspective of whether You welcome or deplore this possible future scenario, depending on whether you think the future post-human entities are conscious and have an aesthetic sense or whether they're just zombies.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would be a zombie or would it be conscious and self-aware? And I think there's no way of answering this empirically. And some people think that consciousness and self-awareness is an emergent property in any sufficiently complicated networks that they would be. Others say, well, maybe it's something special to the flesh and blood that we're made of. We don't know. And in a sense, this may not matter to the way people things behave because we could be zombies and still behave as though they were intelligent. But I remember after one of my talks, someone came up and said, wouldn't it be sad”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they might, but again, all better off because I can't conceive what they'd be like. They won't be green men and women with eyes on stalks. They'll be something quite different. We just don't know. But there isn't an interesting question, actually, which comes up when I've sometimes spoken to audiences about this topic, but the question of consciousness and self-awareness, because going back to philosophical questions, I mean, whether an electronic robot”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sun's been shiny for that length of time, but the sun has got six billion years more to go before it flares up and engulfs the inner planet. So the sun is less than halfway through its life and the expanding universe goes on far longer still, maybe forever. And I like to quote Woody Allen who said eternity is very long, especially towards the end. So we shouldn't think of ourselves as maybe even the halfway stage. In the emergence of cosmic complexity. And so these entities who are post cursors, they will go beyond the solar system. And of course, even if there's nothing else out there already, then they could populate the rest of the galaxy.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Transition into something which is electronic eventually because there may be some limits to the capacity of flesh and blood brains anyways, then those electronic entities may not want to stay on the planet like Mars. They may want to go away. And so there'll be the precursors of the future evolution of life and intelligence coming from the Earth. And of course there's one point which perhaps astronomers are more aware of than most people. Most people are aware that we are the outcome of four billion years of evolution. Most of them nonetheless probably think that we humans are somehow the culmination, the top of the tree. No astronomers could believe that because astronomers know that the Earth is four and a half billion years old”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“hopes to be heavily regulated on earth one potentials and ethical grounds and of course we are pretty well adapted to the earth so we don't have the incentive to do these things in the way they were there so our argument is that it'll be those crazy pioneers on mars using all these scientific advances which would be controlled here away from the regulators they will transition into a new post-human species and so if they do that and if they”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From the Earth to Mars to escape the Earth's problems. It's a dangerous illusion because it's far easier to deal with climate change on Earth than to terraform Mars to make it properly habitable to humans. So there's no planet B for ordinary risk-averse people. But for these crazy adventurers, then you can imagine that they would be trying to live on Mars as great pioneers. And by the end of the century, then there will be huge advances compared to the present in two things. First in understanding genetics so as to genetically redesign one's offspring. And secondly, to use cyborg techniques to implant something in our brain or indeed think about downloading, etc. And those techniques will”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then low Earth orbit, I suspect, can be done quite cheaply in the future. But going to Mars, which is very, very expensive and dangerous for humans, the only people who would go would-be these adventurers may be on one-way trip, like some of the early polar explorers and Magellan and people like that. And we would share them on. expect and I've ever hoped that by the end of a century there will be a small community of such people on Mars living very uncomfortably far less comfortably than at the South Pole or the bottom of the ocean or the top of Everest but they will be there and they won't have their own ticket but they'll be there incidentally I think it is a dangerous illusion to think as Elon Musk Said that we can have mass emigration”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You launch into space just the kind of people prepared to accept that sort of risk. And of course test pilots and people who go hang gliding and go to the South Pole, etc. are prepared to accept a 2% risk at least for a big challenge. Then, of course, you do it more cheaply. And that's why I think human space flight should be left to the billionaires and their sponsors because then the taxpayers aren't paying and they can launch simply those people who are prepared to accept high risks. Space adventure, not space tourism. And we should cheer them on. And as regards where they would go,”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“launched 135 times and it had two spectacular failures which each killed the seven people in the crew and it had been mistakenly presented as safe for civilians and there was a woman school teacher killed in one of them it was a big national trauma and they tried to make it safer still but”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“of Mars and of course even more of Ancelus or Europa where you could never send humans. We depend on robots. They're far, far cheaper because to send a human to Mars requires feeding of the 200 days on the journey there and bringing them back. And neither of those are necessary for robots. So the practical case for humans is getting very weak. And if humans go, it's only as an adventure, really. And so the line in our book is that human spaceflight should not be pursued by NASA or public funding agencies because it has no practical purpose, but also because it's specially expensive if they do it, because they would have to be risk-averse in launching civilians into space. I can illustrate that by noting that the shuttle...”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a theme of my other new book out this year, which is called The End of Astronauts. Co written with my old friend and colleague from Berkeley, Don Goldsmith. And it's really about the role of human spaceflight versus robotic spaceflies. And just to summarize what it says, it argues that the practical case for sending humans into space is getting weaker all the time as robots get better, more capable. Robots 50 years ago couldn't do anything very much, but now they could assemble big structures on space or on the moon, and they could probably do exploration. Well, present ones on Mars. Can't actually do the geology, but future AI will be able to do the geology, and already they can dig on Mars. And so if you want to do exploration,”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we can't refute their existence in the way the Fermi paradox is supposed to refute their existence because these would not be aggressive or expansionist.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then this raises another question because there's the famous argument against there being lots of aliens out there, which is that they would come and invade us and eat us or something like that. That's a common idea, which Fermi is attributed to have been the first to say. And I think there's an escape clause to that because these entities would be all by second and tell to designed by their predecessors and then designed by us. And whereas Darwinian selection requires two things. It requires aggression and intelligence. This future Intel design may favor intelligence because that's what they were designed for, but it may not favor aggression. And so these future entities, they may be sitting deep thoughts thinking deep thoughts and not being at all expansionist. So they could be out there.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also, they won't necessarily want to be on a planet with an atmosphere or gravity. They may go off into the blue yonder. And if they're near immortal, they won't be daunted by interstellar travel taking a long time. And so if we looked at what would happen on the Earth in the next millions of years, then there may be these electronic entities which have been sent out and are now far away from the Earth, but still sort of burping away in some fashion to be detected. And so this therefore leads me to think that if there was another planet, Richard evolved like the Earth and was ahead of us, it wouldn't be synchronized, so we wouldn't see a flat and blood civilization, but we would see these electronic progeny, as it were.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of design, which will be humans designing their progeny to be better adapted to where they are. And if they go to Mars or somewhere, they're badly adapted. They want to adapt a lot. And so they will adapt. But there may be some limits to what could be done with flesh and blood. And so they may become largely electronic. download their brains and be electronic entities. And if they're electronic, Then what's important is that they're near immortal.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had a head start, it may have formed on a plan to run an older star. But then let's ask what we would see. It's taken nearly four billion years from the first live to us, and we've now got this technological civilization, which could make itself detectable to any alien out there. But I think most people would say that this civilization of flesh and blood creatures in the collective civilization may not last more than a few hundred years more. I think that people may, some people say it will kill itself off. But I'm more optimistic, and I would say that what we're going to have in future is no longer the slow Darwinian selection, but we're going to have what I call secular”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Keep our eyes open for, but I think if we ask what about a planet like the Earth where evolution had taken more or the same track? As you say, it wouldn't be synchronized if it had lagged behind, then of course it would not have got to advanced life. But it”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that's important. Of course, again, it's speculation, but in speculating about intelligent life. And I take these search seriously. In fact, I chair the committee that the Russian-American investor, Yuri Milner, supports looking for intelligent life. He's putting $10 million a year into better equipment and getting time on telescopes to do this. And so I think it's worthwhile, even though I don't hold my breath for success, it's very exciting, but that does leave me to wonder what might be detected. And I think where we don't know, we've got to be open-minded about anything. We've no idea what it will be. And so any anomalous objects or even some strange shiny objects in the solar system or anything we've got to”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On one of the moons. That'll just be any kind of vegetation or life. The question of the aliens of science fiction is a different matter.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In either those places, that would immediately be important because if life has originated twice independently in one planned system, the solar system, that would tell us straight away it wasn't a rare accident and must have happened billions of times in the galaxy. At the moment, we can't rule out it being unique. And incidentally, if we found life on Mars, then that would still be ambiguous because people have realized that this early life could have got from Mars to Earth or vice versa on meteorites. So if you found life on Mars, then some skeptics could still say if it's a single origin. But I think”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something about the seasons and the climate. And that's the kind of calculation and inference we might be able to draw within the next 10 or 20 years about other exoplanets and evidence of some sort of biosphere on one of them would, of course, be crucial and it would rule out the still logical possibility that life is unique. But there's another way in which this may happen in X20 years. People think there could be something swimming under the ice of Europa and then Celadus and probes are being sent to maybe not quite go under the ice but detect the spray coming out to see if there's evidence for organics in that. And if we found any evidence knowledge of life that had happened.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And see if it's got oxygen or chlorophyll and things in it. So that will come. James Webb may make some steps there. But I think we can look forward to learning quite a bit in the next 20 years. Because I like to say, supposing that we're aliens looking at the solar system, then they see the sun as an ordinary star, they'd see the earth as in Carl Sager's nice phrase, a pale blue dot lying very close in his sky to its star, our sun, and much, much, much fainter. But if they could observe that dot, they could learn quite a bit. They could perhaps get the spectacular of the light and find the atmosphere. They'd find a shade of blue was slightly different, depending on whether the Pacific Ocean or lamb Acia was facing them so they could infer the length of the day and the oceans and continents.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, James Webb may do this, but even better will be the European ground-based telescope called Unimaginably the Extremely Large Telescope, which has a 39 meter diameter mirror. 39 meters, mosaic of 800 sheets of glass. And that will collect enough light from one of these exoplanets around a nearby star to be able to separate out its light from that of the star, which is a millions of times brighter, and get the spectrum of the planet.”
2022-07-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #305 – Martin Rees: Black Holes, Alien Life, Dark Matter, and the Big Bang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source